[News] Cryptojacking: Over 2,500 Websites Out There to Steal Your CPU Time

[StyM]

https://www.techpowerup.com/238623/c...-your-cpu-time

Cryptojacking is a new phenomenon, which was popularized by ThePirateBay embedding its website with a Javascript-based crypto-currency miner. It quickly sprung up the debate on whether crypto-currency miners hidden into web-pages could become the revenue model of the future, replacing online advertising or paid subscriptions. Some commentators argue that it's fine as long as users are made sufficiently aware that a website is embedding a miner, and is presented with a choice between ads and the miner. Others were steadfast against the idea as heavy Internet browsing (across multiple tabs), could bring down computers to a crawl, and have a more than tangible impact on electricity bills.

According to an ArsTechnica report, there could be at least 2,500 websites out there, with embedded crypto-currency miners that are hidden from the users. Willem de Groot, an independent cybersecurity researcher told the publication that he estimates JS miners may have proliferated to 2,496 websites, and its adoption is on the rise. Some dishonest websites embed miners as a revenue source in addition to ads and sponsored content. At the heart of the controversy is Coinhive. This company sells easy-to-integrate crypto-currency miners that can be embedded into websites as a revenue source. The company is on a marketing overdrive, writing to siteops and bloggers to spread their miners.

[AliG]

*shrug*

What are people going to do, complain to the FCC that their resources are being used by a piracy website they frequent?

[Particle]

*shrug*

What are people going to do, complain to the FCC that their resources are being used by a piracy website they frequent?

Your model of where this ends up is overly simplistic. Out in the real world we're seeing exactly the same situation that exists with malware on websites. The real worry is when legitimate websites or rich ads are compromised and this sort of thing is injected into it. Crypto mining JS has already shown up in many compromised Wordpress installs for otherwise legitimate websites using that as their CMS.

[Charles Wirth]

HWBOT was hacked and they installed this cryptomining on the visitors browsers, one of the members noticed the CPU usage spike when browsing the bot. The problem was fixed quickly but it is still uncertain to how long it was hacked and who the monies paid to.