Is a Bitcoin mining virus, more powerful than mining farms?

[nuno12345]

Assuming it could be written and not detected. It would pull either part of the cpu or part of the discrete gpu.

neither part does a lot of hashing.  Say you bleed 10 percent of the cpu or gpu.  maybe 50mh a pc so 20 pc's for 1 gh.

2000 pc's for 1th

2,000,000 pc's for 1ph.

not much more can be bleed off without detection.

So is it possible to make a virus that infects 2mill pc's sure.  and if you are never caught you hash at 1ph. my guess is it would be found out quickly. since all the pc's would be dedicating a decent amount of cpu/gpu/watts to the mining.

I know OP didn't ask but keep in mind that with a virus you dont spend a dime on electricity while with a 1PH mining farm you spend alot.
So I assume that with 1M or less pc infected you get the same profit

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[thirdprize]

For example a Bitcoin mining farm might have a few petahashes of mining power. Will a Bitcoin mining virus network have the same amount of power?

No. Couse viruses uses a cpu. And using cpu for mining btc is useless. But if this virus is used to mine some cpu coin then yes. Most of cpu coins is mined trought botnets.

Viruses can also use the GPU... 

Yeah, but its harder to create such a virus, and also its more noticebl for a pc owner if a gpu runs 100% all the time. And its less profittable. =)

You would not run it at maximum speed.  You would do it in the background as the number of machines affected would give you the processing power you need. 

[Bizmark13]

Assuming it could be written and not detected. It would pull either part of the cpu or part of the discrete gpu.

neither part does a lot of hashing.  Say you bleed 10 percent of the cpu or gpu.  maybe 50mh a pc so 20 pc's for 1 gh.

2000 pc's for 1th

2,000,000 pc's for 1ph.

not much more can be bleed off without detection.

So is it possible to make a virus that infects 2mill pc's sure.  and if you are never caught you hash at 1ph. my guess is it would be found out quickly. since all the pc's would be dedicating a decent amount of cpu/gpu/watts to the mining.

If 20 PCs equal 1 GH/s then wouldn't you need 20,000 PCs for 1 TH/s and 20,000,000 PCs for 1 PH/s?

Anyway, both Bitcoin mining viruses and non-SHA-256 altcoin mining viruses would be profitable (it is free electricity, after all). A 1 million PC botnet where each PC is capable of 50 MH/s would have a total hashpower of about 50 million MH/s or 50 TH/s. At the current difficulty, the botnet operator would get a reasonable-ish passive profit of $150* per day according to Coinwarz.

However, the botnet operator could earn much more than this if he chose to mine CPU and GPU mineable altcoins instead. If he mined Darkcoin and we assume that each PC has 3 MH/s of X11 hashing power, he would get $75,000** per day!

Viruses that mine scrypt-based currencies would fall somewhere in the middle as they have ASICs built for them but the performance difference between ASIC mining and GPU mining is not as extreme as SHA-256.

*If the miner only mined at 10% max performance to prevent the PC owners from finding out, it would only bring in $15 a day.

**Again, if the miner only mined at 10% max performance, it would bring in $7,500 a day. I'm not sure if this is practically feasible though since dumping that many coins on an exchange every single day would depress the price and surely the exchange owners will find out?

Additional note:

Recently, uTorrent got into a bit of controversy after adding a program that uses spare CPU cycles to mine cryptocurrencies (among other things) into their software. It's not a virus since it's a legitimate program that can be easily uninstalled via the control panel and the intention behind it is good since part of the profits are donated to worthy causes but it works in a very similar way to how Bitcoin mining viruses used to work in the past. As myself and others here have already mentioned, it would be far more profitable to mine cryptocurrencies that don't have ASICs built for them yet compared to mining Bitcoin so I suspect the program is mining one or more CPU or GPU mineable altcoins.

Here is the link:

http://www.btcfeed.net/news/utorrent-update-installs-crypto-miner-without-user-approval/

EDIT: According to another thread here, it seems that the program is mining Litecoin. A bit of a poor choice IMHO.

[The Degentleman]

What if the forum was making your CPU mine bitcoins as you typed your replies top the threads here....?

*tinfoil hat on*

[mistercoin]

For example a Bitcoin mining farm might have a few petahashes of mining power. Will a Bitcoin mining virus network have the same amount of power?

If it infected enough computers, then it would be like any other distributed computing powerhouse, imagine if say SETI or Folding@Home turned all their power to mining BTC. I wonder how many TH/s Folding@Home would pump out if it turned to BTC mining for a day.

[GigaBit]

#BitTorrent

[bitkings]

A better idea would be a virus that infects a miner so that it mines towards your personal address. That'd be more economical.

+1 and you have to hide yourself being detected by the farm owner; otherwise, they will take some actions to improve their security.

[jeffhuys]

#BitTorrent

Yeah, uTorrent had a miner built-in in one of the recent updates. If anyone reading this wants a better alternative: try Transmission (very clean and sleek little bittorrent client, I love it (especially on my Mac)).

[goozman96]

#BitTorrent

Yeah, uTorrent had a miner built-in in one of the recent updates. If anyone reading this wants a better alternative: try Transmission (very clean and sleek little bittorrent client, I love it (especially on my Mac)).

I recently switched to qBittorrent. uTorrent can die in a fire.

[hugs1BTC]

For example a Bitcoin mining farm might have a few petahashes of mining power. Will a Bitcoin mining virus network have the same amount of power?

Depends on how good is the virus and how many machines you can infect. I think Bitcoin mining today is only for real, big players, unless you want to mine altcoins.

[tunkhty]

how to make one ? 

[Mehek]

A better idea would be a virus that infects a miner so that it mines towards your personal address. That'd be more economical.

I am sure that would be detected easily, once the miner sees no money in the address he is mining with.

yes they are being detected because asic miners had extra speed as well as extra security

[Kprawn]

I cannot see how this will go unnoticed by the bigger anti-virus companies for a long duration for this to be affective.

The built in "hearistic" methods of dectection would also counter the replication nature of a virus of this kind. {Worm} ..... You would have to be a very skilled programmer to succeed with this.

I would surely notice if I lose so much processing power needed for mining. 

[hugs1BTC]

I cannot see how this will go unnoticed by the bigger anti-virus companies for a long duration for this to be affective.

The built in "hearistic" methods of dectection would also counter the replication nature of a virus of this kind. {Worm} ..... You would have to be a very skilled programmer to succeed with this.

I would surely notice if I lose so much processing power needed for mining. 

I know some type of viruses work only when PC is idle, or are programmed to use a small percentage of CPU so you don't notice.

[Kprawn]

I cannot see how this will go unnoticed by the bigger anti-virus companies for a long duration for this to be affective.

The built in "hearistic" methods of dectection would also counter the replication nature of a virus of this kind. {Worm} ..... You would have to be a very skilled programmer to succeed with this.

I would surely notice if I lose so much processing power needed for mining. 

I know some type of viruses work only when PC is idle, or are programmed to use a small percentage of CPU so you don't notice.

I might be the exception, being a gamer and a over-clocker we tend to push hardware to it's limits and we notice the smallest change and what processes hog the different components on a computer. {CPU/GPU/Memory}

The average computer user might not notice it, even if it takes 50% of the processing power on their machines. 

[crazyearner]

Indeed it can be more powerful than mining farms if un detected but unusual gpu or cpu use would start throwing up questions or hidden background services running don't go undetected for long seen a few company's try this that where indeed successful at but soon got court doing it. and Utorrent one of the latest versions had this in set to auto run after installing its latest update in an attempt for people to auto run torrent client and also run an auto miner in background of µTorrent in its services without the user knowing. So happy I moved away from µTorrent a long time ago due to them being bought out and then going down hill after. Feel free to have a a read at the story.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/6/8161251/utorrents-secret-bitcoin-miner-adware-malware

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-xp-support-utorrent-bitcoin-miner-tech-news-digest/

Just goes to show even running on  a scale this big with the amount of users that µTorrent has am sure they got away with some nice coin.

[notlist3d]

Indeed it can be more powerful than mining farms if un detected but unusual gpu or cpu use would start throwing up questions or hidden background services running don't go undetected for long seen a few company's try this that where indeed successful at but soon got court doing it. and Utorrent one of the latest versions had this in set to auto run after installing its latest update in an attempt for people to auto run torrent client and also run an auto miner in background of µTorrent in its services without the user knowing. So happy I moved away from µTorrent a long time ago due to them being bought out and then going down hill after. Feel free to have a a read at the story.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/6/8161251/utorrents-secret-bitcoin-miner-adware-malware

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-xp-support-utorrent-bitcoin-miner-tech-news-digest/

Just goes to show even running on  a scale this big with the amount of users that µTorrent has am sure they got away with some nice coin.

I don't know if everyone know's how big these mining farms are.   To get the asic level mining level it's a almost impossible amount of compromised computers with cpu or gpu's.   Most will notice if a computer is dragging from high intensity of mining.   

I think it would be hard to be undetectable.  Someone will notice computer dragging slow, and it will get reported and detectable.  I think large scale this remaining undetectable is just going to be very very tough.

[malickie]

Honestly a virus to mine other people's hardware, considering most people mining have a fairly decent level of tech knowledge would be fairly hard to get through.  Take a look at thepiratebay.  Most of the torrents that have had this type of virus plugged into software have been seen and mentioned.  Sure some of the people who get torrents or what not will never notice it but that is going to be a fairly small percentage of the people who download things like that considering that also takes a bit of tech knowledge to install the programs in the first place.

[Bizmark13]

For example a Bitcoin mining farm might have a few petahashes of mining power. Will a Bitcoin mining virus network have the same amount of power?

If it infected enough computers, then it would be like any other distributed computing powerhouse, imagine if say SETI or Folding@Home turned all their power to mining BTC. I wonder how many TH/s Folding@Home would pump out if it turned to BTC mining for a day.

The average high-end PC is capable of 50 MH/s when mining SHA-256. They have 200,000 participants according to the latest figures so that brings the total maximum hashrate to 50*200,000 = 10 million MH/s or 10 TH/s. If we assume that 1 million PCs mining 24/7 at 10% efficiency (5 TH/s) generates $15 per day (see my post earlier in the thread), then 200,000 PCs should generate about $3 per day.

#BitTorrent

Yeah, uTorrent had a miner built-in in one of the recent updates. If anyone reading this wants a better alternative: try Transmission (very clean and sleek little bittorrent client, I love it (especially on my Mac)).

I recently switched to qBittorrent. uTorrent can die in a fire.

Indeed it can be more powerful than mining farms if un detected but unusual gpu or cpu use would start throwing up questions or hidden background services running don't go undetected for long seen a few company's try this that where indeed successful at but soon got court doing it. and Utorrent one of the latest versions had this in set to auto run after installing its latest update in an attempt for people to auto run torrent client and also run an auto miner in background of µTorrent in its services without the user knowing. So happy I moved away from µTorrent a long time ago due to them being bought out and then going down hill after. Feel free to have a a read at the story.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/6/8161251/utorrents-secret-bitcoin-miner-adware-malware

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-xp-support-utorrent-bitcoin-miner-tech-news-digest/

Just goes to show even running on  a scale this big with the amount of users that µTorrent has am sure they got away with some nice coin.

I just recently installed uTorrent a few days ago. From what I've read, I was expecting it to be terrible but honestly, it's not that bad. The option to opt out is actually pretty clearly stated and quite difficult to miss as long as you read through the instructions for each step of the installation. I didn't install it via the update process as a few others did but I'd be surprised if it was any different.

Also, uTorrent's mining program mined litecoins (and possibly other cryptocurrencies) rather than bitcoins.

EDIT: And the latest version has been stripped of the mining program:

http://blog.utorrent.com/2015/03/28/important-update-about-epic-scale-partner-offer/

Indeed it can be more powerful than mining farms if un detected but unusual gpu or cpu use would start throwing up questions or hidden background services running don't go undetected for long seen a few company's try this that where indeed successful at but soon got court doing it. and Utorrent one of the latest versions had this in set to auto run after installing its latest update in an attempt for people to auto run torrent client and also run an auto miner in background of µTorrent in its services without the user knowing. So happy I moved away from µTorrent a long time ago due to them being bought out and then going down hill after. Feel free to have a a read at the story.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/6/8161251/utorrents-secret-bitcoin-miner-adware-malware

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-xp-support-utorrent-bitcoin-miner-tech-news-digest/

Just goes to show even running on  a scale this big with the amount of users that µTorrent has am sure they got away with some nice coin.

I don't know if everyone know's how big these mining farms are.   To get the asic level mining level it's a almost impossible amount of compromised computers with cpu or gpu's.   Most will notice if a computer is dragging from high intensity of mining.   

I think it would be hard to be undetectable.  Someone will notice computer dragging slow, and it will get reported and detectable.  I think large scale this remaining undetectable is just going to be very very tough.

You can't really compare the two. Legitimate mining firms have expenses that can impact profitability and sometimes make it negative. For a botnet owner/virus creator, there are virtually zero expenses and so any coins mined are completely free. Even if a PC was 10,000 times less powerful than a miner, having 1 million infected PCs would bring in the same amount of coins as 100 miners but with none of the pesky expenses that legitimate miners have to deal with such as rent, hardware costs, and electricity. Hence it might even be more profitable than having 1,000 or even 10,000 physical miners. In other words, it's pure profit after all.

Honestly a virus to mine other people's hardware, considering most people mining have a fairly decent level of tech knowledge would be fairly hard to get through.  Take a look at thepiratebay.  Most of the torrents that have had this type of virus plugged into software have been seen and mentioned.  Sure some of the people who get torrents or what not will never notice it but that is going to be a fairly small percentage of the people who download things like that considering that also takes a bit of tech knowledge to install the programs in the first place.

I assumed from reading the OP that it would be average home users who would get infected (e.g. someone who might not hesitate to open an email attachment containing an infected file or a high school kid who stumbles upon a malware-infested site), and not miners who would probably be more vigilant with their computer's security and knowledgeable about these types of things.

[mayflor2]

For example a Bitcoin mining farm might have a few petahashes of mining power. Will a Bitcoin mining virus network have the same amount of power?

Quite a while ago, when scrypt was popular, people would bind a program to game files that would steal GPU compute power and mine while people played games.   It was spread via torrent sites.    It was very profitable back then but would likely be a waste of time now.