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Showtime Websites Are Mining Monero With Your CPU, Unclear If Hack Or Experiment (bleepingcomputer.com)

Posted by msmash on from the watch-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Two Showtime domains are currently loading and running Coinhive, a JavaScript library that mines Monero using the CPU resources of users visiting Showtime's websites. The two domains are showtime.com and showtimeanytime.com, the latter being the official URL for the company's online video streaming service. It is unclear if someone hacked Showtime and included the mining script without the company's knowledge. Showtime did not respond to a request for comment, but it could be an experiment as the setThrottle value is 0.97, meaning the mining script will remain dormant for 97% of the time. Despite this, Coinhive has been recently adopted by a large number of malware operations, such as malvertisers, adware developers, rogue Chrome extensions, and website hackers, who secretly load the code in a page's background and make money off unsuspecting users. At least two ad blockers have added support for blocking Coinhive's JS library -- AdBlock Plus and AdGuard -- and developers have also put together Chrome extensions that terminate anything that looks like Coinhive's mining script -- AntiMiner, No Coin, and minerBlock.

The Pirate Bay recently ran tests using Coinhive. A recent report has calculated that a site like The Pirate Bay could make around $12,000 per month by mining Monero in the background.

5 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Still think NoScript is optional? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Firefox, you will be missed.

  2. The site doesn't make money. Users lose money. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A recent report has calculated that a site ... could make around $12,000 per month by mining Monero in the background.

    It's not really a case of the site making money. They haven't actually produced anything of real value, so wealth hasn't been created. All they've done is consumed the computing and electricity resources of the site's users, and converted them to an entry in some distributed database. Overall, it's a net economic loss. Resources were consumed without producing anything of value.

    At least advertising, as shitty as it is, can potentially result in a sale, which is an example of actual wealth creation.

    1. Re:The site doesn't make money. Users lose money. by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1, Insightful

      My (admittedly limited) understanding of cryptocurrency mining is that it actually does produce value, in that the mining process itself is what's responsible for distributing, verifying, and otherwise maintaining the blockchain on which the currency is built. Which is to say, miners are the ones facilitating the use of the currency. It's actually part of what makes cryptocurrencies work so well, since the very act of maintaining the currency is both distributed and incentivized.

      All of which is to say, mining isn't just a matter of spinning one's wheels without purpose. It produces value for the people making use of that currency.

  3. Remember kids... by RyanFenton · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Never browse without properly community-maintained ad blocking and script blocking.

    And if any company complains about not being able to 'serve' you properly as they'd like to... add a request to have that complaint blocked.

    Ryan Fenton

  4. Re:Terrible way to fund sites by johannesg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    CPU mining has a return of between 1 and essentially 0% depending on the currency and the price of electricity. Best case scenario, you leave you web browser open for two days, you consume $1 of extra electricity and the web site gets $0.01. Unless the browser could leverage your GPU, you live in Quebec (cheap electricity) and it's winter so you are heating your house with the GPU, this is never going to make sense.

    It makes perfect sense if it is other people paying for the electricity...