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Over 500 Million PCs Are Secretly Mining Cryptocurrency, Researchers Reveal (newsweek.com)
Ad blocking firm AdGuard has found that over 500 million people are inadvertently mining cryptocurrencies through their computers after visiting websites that are running background mining software. The company found 220 popular websites with an aggregated audience of half a billion people use so-called crypto-mining scripts when a user opens their main page. Newsweek reports: The mining tool works by hijacking a computer's central processing unit (CPU), commonly referred to as "the brains" of a computer. Using part of a computer's CPU to mine bitcoin effects the machine's overall performance and will slow it down by using up processing power. The researchers found that bitcoin browser mining is mostly found on websites "with a shady reputation" due to the trouble such sites have with earning revenue through advertising. However, in the future it could become a legitimate and ethical way of making money if the website requests the permission of the visitor first.
"220 sites may not seem like a lot," the researchers wrote in a blogpost detailing their discovery. "But CoinHive was launched less than one month ago on September 14. The growth has been extremely rapid: from nearly zero to .22 percent of Alexa's top 100,000 websites. "This analysis well illustrates the whole web, so it's safe to say that one of every forty websites currently mines cryptocurrency (namely Monero) in the browsers their users employ."
"220 sites may not seem like a lot," the researchers wrote in a blogpost detailing their discovery. "But CoinHive was launched less than one month ago on September 14. The growth has been extremely rapid: from nearly zero to .22 percent of Alexa's top 100,000 websites. "This analysis well illustrates the whole web, so it's safe to say that one of every forty websites currently mines cryptocurrency (namely Monero) in the browsers their users employ."
Jesus mother fucking Christ bouncing on an inverted mother fucking pogo stick, are you seriously including shit like this in what you choose to reference in the goddamned mother fucking summary?
BeauHD, if you're so goddamned fucking stupid that you need to point to articles which have this drivel, and include it here on Slashdot ... you're not fucking qualified to post fucking articles to Slashdot.
Go the fuck home, suck your thumb, and shut the fuck up.
Anybody on Slashdot who doesn't know what is CPU is, please, for the sake of all of us, go home, shut up, and fucking kill yourself in shame.
Fuck people, if you can't cite intelligent articles, don't fucking use them at all.
How did we get such retards posting articles on Slashdot? Fucking hell, Slashdot really is dying.
The mining tool works by hijacking a computer's central processing unit (CPU), commonly referred to as "the brains" of a computer
Wow, that's amazing! Who would have thought of carrying out an attack in this manner!
Gee, none of us here knew that. Thanks a lot Sherlock, for that amazing piece of information!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Let's get down to brass tacks: How do I stop the bitminer? Can't I just close the web page? Or do I need to close the whole browser? Does the miner start up again when I relaunch my browser? I've been watching Firefox hog 4/5th of my PC's resources, with chronic pauses ("the browser has stopped responding") so bad that I can't switch tabs and even animated gifs freeze. Other programs run like nothing's going on. It gets worse and worse as the day goes on. Every add-on disabled. I visit one of these affected websites a couple times a week.
Re AC and "web site they visited to have scripting control over their browser?"
A site offers no ads and its archives for x % of CPU use for y mins.
The user can build up an amount that grants ad free and/or archive use.
No credit card needed.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The effect is quite audible on my macbook pro. If I visit thepiratebay results page and disable adblock plus, the fans noise up from zero to the top speed in 30 seconds. Firefox CPU usage jumps to 25%. This stops as soon as the web page is closed, of course.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
I'd rather support a website with cpu cycles anonymously than advertising. They have to eat too.
For every dollar their visitors pay to the electric company, the site earns a penny. It is an incredibly inefficient way to pay for content.
We need a decent system for micropayments.
The mining tool works by hijacking a computer's central processing unit (CPU), commonly referred to as "the brains" of a computer.
Idiocracy, here we come. I suspect we'll have to start talking in 3rd grade language when Kid Rock is president.
We'll make great pets