On the topic of cyber crime with our class on the blockchain approaching, I thought I’d write a little about the malicious side of cryptocurrency mining.<\/p>\n
As of September of 2017, 1.65 million computers are mining cryptocurrencies<\/a> without the knowledge of their users. This is a result of viruses using CPU power of victim networks to mine; however, there’s an even darker side to mining without permission. Many websites, even major ones like the Pirate Bay<\/a> (in a deviation from their typical classiness & good practices), use your computer to mine cryptocurrency while you browse.<\/p>\n There are even concerns that smart devices, or “the internet of things” as we discussed in class, could be hacked and used to mine cryptocurrency. Over 185 million devices<\/a> may be mining cryptocurrency without their owners’ knowledge right now. Newsweek quoted John McAffee:<\/p>\n \u201cThe attacks are slowly escalating, similar to the way America developed the atomic bomb,\u201d McAfee, who created the eponymous antivirus computer software but is now longer connected to it,\u00a0said in October<\/a>. \u201cClearly there are weaknesses. Anticipate that these will be exploited in a big way.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Pirate Bay initially experimented with cryptocurrency mining in place of their less than savory advertisements. Here’s a question for you: would you rather your favorite website show ads, or slow your computer a bit by using it to mine Bitcoin?\u00a0<\/strong>Personally, I use uBlock Origin as an ad blocker. Like many ad block users, I have a little guilt visiting my favorite websites and not supporting them \u2014 but I’ve become spoiled, and I can’t\u00a0stand\u00a0<\/em>ads. Now, some people have already begun making mining blockers,<\/a> but I don’t know if I’d get one. If Reddit was transparent and truthful about mining Bitcoin through their users, and there was no noticeable effect on my device \u2014 perhaps I’m misled, but I think I’d prefer that to ads.<\/p>\n Do you think it’s unethical for a website to mine Bitcoin through their users’ computers, even if the website tells the users?\u00a0<\/strong>Would you avoid a website for fear of being used for mining?\u00a0<\/strong>Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Unfortunately, I won’t be in class Monday, but I will be blogging & I will email any tech news I find to you all before Monday since I won’t be there to discuss in the beginning of class. Thanks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the topic of cyber crime with our class on the blockchain approaching, I thought I’d write a little about the malicious side of cryptocurrency mining. As of September of 2017, 1.65 million computers are mining cryptocurrencies without the knowledge of their users. This is a result of viruses using CPU power of victim networks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8867,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8867"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gilbertnet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}