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Opera 50 Web Browser Will Offer Anti-Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Mining Feature (betanews.com)
BrianFagioli writes: The upcoming version 50 of the Opera web browser will offer an integrated anti-Bitcoin mining feature. Besides Bitcoin, it will also block the mining of other cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin and Ethereum. If you aren't aware, some websites are hijacking user computers to mine for cryptocurrencies. This is not only a potential violation of trust, but it can negatively impact the computer's performance too. Mining is also a huge waste of electricity. Opera 50 will offer an optional setting that, when enabled, blocks this nonsense.
But it still has to be able to detect that the code is even there. It's going to be a cat and mouse game similar to anti-virus and anti-malware. It will need definition updates in order to detect and block the code. The authors of this bitcoin mining software will just alter and tweak it a little bit. It's a moving target.
Can javascript be used for mining? But I guess it would be slow.
I'll take a JS miner over shady ad networks every day of the week.
Plus it already features full reporting of your browsing behavior to China.
What's not to like?
I'd prefer they'd mine bitcoin in the background any day over any ads or a gazillion trackers that follow me around.
Screw all these people hating on js miners -- this is so much better than ads. Once the browsers implement proper throttling of idle tabs etc, there is no way you could argue this is not fair. You could design a decentralized internet this way. Loading a page costs a few milliseconds of mining etc.
I use the proxy feature of Opera to access blocked sites, but most of my browsing is done through Waterfox, Opera needs to go back to Presto and lose the Chinese ownership before it can be a credible browser again. Opera like browsers like Vivaldi and Otter also need to innovate their own engines instead of just leeching off blink/webkit.
Write it in Brainfuck. Calculating a SHA-1 hash should almost be as efficient in Brainfuck as cryptocurrency mining.
And believe me, Trump does not like it. He does not like it. Well, he says he likes it, but according to multiple WH staff, he goes into a tirade whenever the subject comes up.
He's going in early 2018 to get his tertiary syphilis treated. He doesn't know it yet.
If you want mine your own crypto currency, you need a motherboard with 19 PCIe 1X slots to plug in 19 GPUs and a couple of 1200W PSUs.
Browsers. First, they deliver an execution platform which sucks up every bit of crap out there and tries to execute it, then they try to "fix" it by disabling selected pieces of it based on whatever patterns.
What can possibly go wrong?
C'mon, folks. We are at least in the third iteration of this antipattern.
Me? I disable Javascript. Some pages (NASA, I'm looking at you!) show up as black (or white) holes. Most of them (Google groups, I'm looking at you) are uninteresting, anyway.
Hey, webpushers! Stuff your javascript up whatever of your cavities you choose to.
Nothing about this is hijacking. Hijacking implies it's an unauthorized takeover when the fact is that it's simply Javascript is doing exactly what it was created to do: execute arbitrary instructions from a remote source. The only thing different is that this is annoying people enough that it threatens all the jerks that demand to execute Javascript.
Here's an idea: add basic animation and ad hoc relative source loading for CSS then completely do away with Javascript. Oh but the money people don't give a shit about what users want, it's all about what they want.
Be real, this is just the logical conclusion of Javascript.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What are Anti-Bitcoins and why would I want to mine them in my browser?
Ezekiel 23:20
Just wait until WebAssembly is forced down our throats, like has been done with so many other shitty web technologies.
Your browser will be running obscure bytecode that takes more work and effort to analyze than even obfuscated JavaScript code does.
WebAssembly supporters will usually start blabbering on about "sandboxing" at this point, but if there's one thing we should have learned about sandboxing is that it's never perfect. There's always some way that it ends up leaking, or is exploited, or suffers from bugs.
Frankly, I find it kind of sad that the same kinds of people who were screaming bloody murder about things like Java applets and Flash are now the same kinds of people who are pushing hard for WebAssembly.
At least with Java applets and Flash we could easily avoid them by just not installing the plugins that implemented that functionality. But WebAssembly? It'll be built in to our browsers, and we won't be able to easily remove it. Even if it could perhaps be disabled, it will likely be impossible to remove all traces of its code from one's system.
Unwanted cryptocurrency mining is just one small threat that's amplified by this WebAssembly nonsense that's being crammed down our throats and up our asses.
The blocking in Firefox blocks not only JS miners, but also anti-image-save scripts, back-button blockers, a mass amount of behavior tracking and surveillance code, things that display over the top of the text you want to read, auto-play audio and video, and a hundred other modern web annoyances.
It's called Noscript. Or if you prefer, uMatrix. Modern web is unusable without them
, do failed bitcoin investors jump off the roof of the marijuana dispensary?
Would you rather have ads in your content or cryptocoin miners running in the background?
Assuming content costs money, both seem ways of making money on pages with content.
That said, it might make sense to limit the amount of the CPU that the browser can use; if we're designing webpages that need >1ghz octo-core processors, we're already doing something probably pretty wrong.
Of emscripten/asm.js
Anyone who thought it was a smart idea and convenient to use didn't understand the full perils of it, perils that those of us from the 90s remembered all too well from the plugins of that era (some of which remained until very recently, or even today, but haven't been actively used by anyone with an inkling of sense in going on 20 years.)
By making the scripting engine of a web browser provide features equivalent to a computer or operating system you are essentially allowing the exact same level of malware capability as an actual operating system allows. Combined with a cross-compiler that can convert any normal program into javascript, you have just eased the ability to port said malware from an architecture specific system to a platform agnostic browser engine. For the lazy malware writers, they can make fully network accessable malware inside the browser, to use your system for whatever purpose they need. For the dedicated ones, they now have an injection platform that should work similiarly on all architectures, with only architecture specific exploits tailed to gain application, user, or system level access to perform their more comprehensive infection.
Javascript itself was always a bad idea, but they have taken it to the next level with asm.js and emscripten.
NoScript blocks all cryptocurrency miners, as well as a bunch of other stuff. There's also uBlock if you want a little easier time of it, and don't mind trusting the block list maintainers.
How difficult would it be to limit how much CPU the browser has access to ?
Restricted to minimal CPU by default, allows you to whitelist sites that you trust.
Plausible ? Better way ?
Opera is now part of a Chinese consortium, non-open source, and therefore not to be trusted.
Firefox can easily do this with uBlock Origin with all of the non-language options ticked, as well as No Coin, Decentraleyes, and Privacy Badger.
I would be ok with mining if the sites had an opt-in/out option
The money people want you to run and download only their certified (and rented) stuff. Running shared code is nothing new.
CSS has very basic animation... but you might mean more than that.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
What's the current value of anti-bitcoin anyway? I can't seem to find it anywhere. I've been looking into investing in cryptocurrency other than bitcoin and, with Opera practically endorsing this one, I'm even more interested. It must be really easy to mine right now though if Opera is making a feature for users to mine from the browser.
"use this classic Windows hosts trick to block the Coinhive or Crypto-Loot domains at the OS level" https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/a-new-player-joins-coinhive-on-the-browser-cryptojacking-scene/ BLEEPING COMPUTER
"block known Bitcoin mining domains. One of the better options to do that is to add these to the hosts file" https://www.ghacks.net/2017/09/22/how-to-block-bitcoin-mining-in-your-browser/ GHacks
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If you want mine your own cryptocurrency, you need a motherboard with 19 PCIe 1X slots to plug in 19 GPUs and a couple of 1200W PSUs.