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A Surge of Sites and Apps Are Exhausting Your CPU To Mine Cryptocurrency (arstechnica.com)
Dan Goodin, writing for ArsTechnica: The Internet is awash with covert crypto currency miners that bog down computers and even smartphones with computationally intensive math problems called by hacked or ethically questionable sites. The latest examples came on Monday with the revelation from antivirus provider Trend Micro that at least two Android apps with as many as 50,000 downloads from Google Play were recently caught putting crypto miners inside a hidden browser window. The miners caused phones running the apps to run JavaScript hosted on Coinhive.com, a site that harnesses the CPUs of millions of PCs to mine the Monero crypto currency. In turn, Coinhive gives participating sites a tiny cut of the relatively small proceeds. Google has since removed the apps, which were known as Recitiamo Santo Rosario Free and SafetyNet Wireless App. Last week, researchers from security firm Sucuri warned that at least 500 websites running the WordPress content management system alone had been hacked to run the Coinhive mining scripts. Sucuri said other Web platforms -- including Magento, Joomla, and Drupal -- are also being hacked in large numbers to run the Coinhive programming interface.
Slashdot keeps mentioning this. Are you considering adding this to the website? That would be cool!
This might remind people how weird it is that they run software automatically downloaded from arbitrary foreign sources all the time on their personal computer.
If people still knew how to write HTML, almost no web site would need to use any "JavaScript" or other "active content", with all the security issues this implies.
This is just indicative of the much larger issue of how incredibly dangerous it is to allow servers to inject and run arbitrary code from third parties on your client machines. Third party ad-networks already do this, and if they're benign, they'll only TRACK you. If they're not, they'll do this, or try to hack your machine, or just about anything else they want to with all the power Javascript gives them - crypto-currency mining included.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
If people still knew how to write HTML, almost no web site would need to use any "JavaScript" or other "active content"
How would, say, a web-based front-end to an IRC server work without script? It needs to know when messages have arrived in order to display them. The same is true of a multi-user whiteboard, which needs to know when another user has drawn a stroke. In addition, server-side image map doesn't support drag input, only click input.
Or should those instead be native executables that a user can download, install, and use? If so, then because native executables are generally specific to one operating system, Murphy's law holds that such an application will inevitably be designed for an operating system other than the one your device regularly runs. And it's still "software [manually] downloaded from arbitrary foreign sources".
Or should real-time interactive applications instead be written for the Java Virtual Machine or the .NET Common Language Runtime? Even though one such executable can run on multiple desktop operating systems, it still generally excludes iOS and Android, and it's stlil "software [manually] downloaded from arbitrary foreign sources".
Whether crypto-mining or not, some pages seem to use a disproportionate share of cpu time for the content they're delivering. Some form of cpu usage indicator per tab would be helpful, similar in vein to the speaker icon on tabs that produce sound.
Does anyone remember the person that deleted the small JavaScript file and brought down so many big sites because they were loading it from his site instead of having a copy on their own site? I think it was to justify text. It was only a couple of lines.
You need to find a function that is popular like that and is loaded from a central server. Once you have identified one then find a way to change it so that it gets the browsers to mine cryptocurrency. Probably don't want it to spike the CPU usage as it would give it away.
The electricity cost is negligible too.
The price of electric power depends on where you live. And in a lot of places, people have to pay twice for electric power: once to run the computer and once to run the air conditioner that moves the heat generated by the computer to the outside.
nevermind that [viewers] got their cut when they consumed the content on the site
Why do people keep referring to viewing works created by others as "consuming" them? A work isn't "consumed", or used up, in the act of viewing it.
With all the garbage that most sites want to run on our CPU's to serve ads and do all sorts of tracking why is crypto currency mining any different? Every sinle page that you hit on the internet has TONS and TONS of javascript crap that wants to run. All of this nonsense wastes our CPU power for the benefit of the site we are using. Is it just the direct revenue that we are offended by all of a sudden? Tracking code profits them directly. Offloading tasks onto your machine that should be done on their web server profits them directly by allowing them to run a smaller footprint of less powerful servers.
If you want to stop this nonsense install a javascript blocker. Noscript and adblock plus are great add ons that will improve your browser experience. For those sites that have ad block blockers? Fuck them. I hit the back button and never go to those sites. There's millions of alternative sites out there to get the same information who's not going to be tacky about a user putting their foot down to what's run on their system.
Web designers really need to think about all the javascript garbage that they are packing their pages with and how their users are just going to start blocking them. I browse the web on a 5ghz i7700k with 64gb ram. I still don't want this bullshit slowing down my experience or wasting my electricity running tasks for the benefit of a for profit business.
I'm actually glad people are finally using this for more nefarious purposes. It's going to get us visibility into an issue with the web today. This is an out of control wild west practice that needs to be curbed. If more users start using noscript designers will need to think twice before packing their pages full of crap.
BTW for you web designer assholes. I'm GLAD that blocking all your garbage causes you issues. I'm glad it costs you directly in your ad revenue and I'm glad that your web statistics are not accurate. Fuck you people and your abusive use of my computing resources.
Probably quite a few, which is the advantage of something like that. Pretty much the same as spam, on an individual basis it's probably not very lucrative or effective. But by the time you are getting a 1-2% rate on a vast number of things, it balances out.
I'm utterly unsurprised people are harvesting CPU via javascript. And I'm utterly laughing because I whitelist javascript and sure as fuck don't allow arbitrary sites to run shit like that ... because I assume the average site is ran by greedy assholes.
Ads, malware, analytics ... it's all the same to me. Block the shit out of it no matter what it is. Because someone either wants to monetize your information, or, apparently, the act of browsing to their site to offer up your CPU to them.
As structured, the web has an idiotic security model, where you are expected to trust every site you visit to essentially run arbitrary code, set cookies, and access god knows what.
This shit was inevitable, and pretty much reinforces my belief that trusting random websites is idiotic. But people keep doing it, because they can't live without cat videos and poop emojis.
This is the internet we deserve.
Type "about:performance" in any recent Gecko web browsers (e.g., SeaMonkey and Firefox)'s URL form to show for a top type view. I would also like to see a tab version like its audio.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).