Bitcoin Forum

After reading about the Pirate Bay hijacking web miners (https://gizmodo.com/the-pirate-bay-added-a-cpu-hijacking-bitcoin-miner-to-s-1818488143) I wondered if anyone had created a list of such sites. How would you even detect that the site is stealing compute power from your device?

Coinhive.com is the site that provides simple code which can be integrated in any webpage that will start mining using CPU of visitors. What they earn might not be significant if they don't have thousands of users active at any point but many sites might still have this code embedded because of greed.

You can open site which you suspect in your browser than go to task manager it will show how much CPU is being used while site is open, if it is using very high than probably site have browser miner embedded.

A decent AV will all appropriate modules should detect this and block your access to a website having this miner hidden in it.

Even without it, it s not a big deal, these scrypts use a very low amount of your CPU power so you do not identify it. Does not change much for you and the amount of extra power you might end up paying is just a few cents on a monthly level.

It will be hard to keep tracking of sites with certain script, instead if you are worried about mining in the browser, just install extension like no coin or antiminer in chrome which should block all 3rd party miners, first party miner however a bit more tricky I think.

There's really no way to precisely find out if a site is using your CPU for mining, but yeah, the telltale sign is the spike in CPU usage whenever you visit the website. It's fairly easy to stop though. The No Coin extension should keep your browser mining free. You could also go ahead and stop your browser from using scripts altogether, either manually or with other extensions.

Some malicious ads can also steal your CPU power, so you might want to block those too, but it's always a good practice to block ads by default anyway.

This raises a good question though: Would you favor a site's decision to mine visitors' CPU in lieu of ads for revenue?

Try to avoid those sites that you know does that. You can disable Javascript, and it can block out the miner running in the background as it is mostly likely using Javascript. You can prevent this by having add-ons to your browser, such as ScriptBlock (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scriptblock/hcdjknjpbnhdoabbngpmfekaecnpajba), which I use for Chrome.

I am not sure, but I think it is possible to detect the 'BTC/Monero' miner by 'inspect element' on the site. Apparently this is actually a threat that is getting more common, called Cryptojacking. Had a good read here (https://www.wired.com/story/cryptojacking-cryptocurrency-mining-browser/). :)

https://www.wired.com/story/cryptojacking-cryptocurrency-mining-browser/

Yes, don't mess in some mining site. Especially if you go in, don't mess around.
Before that, I went in to a miner to talk about the community. It turns out that the browser was hijacked.
Some websites may steal your passwords. Friends must do a good job of backup.

Is this a criminal ?, I am a customer of pirate bay. I downloaded some apps and movies there.
after this I will leave it. thank you for caring.

Shouldn't sites like that be reported somewhere? Or at least they should ask permission of their visitors.

If it's an official or legit site they will not do it, or if they are caught something big could happen. From a website where the most of downloads are illegal, do you expect to report  them somewhere?

I have heard that some sites uses scrypts or what ever, to use visitors CPU for mining. Even if that is a low percentage, still it doesn't mean its right. Using peoples resources without permission is crime. I will try that addon no coin, hope it will help. I guess that we need to expect more things like this in the future. People should be even more careful, because this days it seams nothing is safe.

There are many such websites appearing on the internet . This is an unauthorized mining operation without user approval.

That's right even decent site which we think that's not doing it there's still possibilities that it will happen if money talks then surely things would be change, its an easy earnings just by using their website and not informing their visitors they can earned lots of money hope someone can create the list.

This is alarming and totally illegal most for those who have a weak computer that can cause a problem in browsing experience. For those who have a good computer it's not really obvious. to prevent this is to have a noscript utilized in your firefox browser or to have a Adblocker plus and add No coin extension, it can also installed in Chrome browsers. We really want to end this mess like coinhive did to mine monero and other such sites.

Wow, that's news to me. I did not think that was possible. Oh well, time to enable those script blockers kids!

If this kind of mining is not that harmfull for our devices then whats bad here? I found the argumentation given by those websites pretty logical. Instead of common ads (sometimes hey can't be locked by adblock and they are very annoying or some websites are not available while using adblock) service owners can monetize it by mining. It seems like the pirate bay realy needs that money. Just remember all block attempts and trials against them.

It can easily be detected if your CPU/GPU usage is using its full computing power even if the task you're doing is not supposed to be using all of that

I don't see the problem here.

Guys do you seriously believe that anyone would sacrifice themselves by creating something like pirate bay without any personal return?
Remember: if it's free it's that you're the product.

You can pay every film and game you dowload illegally on something like pirate bay
Or you can chose to give them parts of your CPU power to mine btc and pay them like this.

Easy choice for me! :D

Simply use any app, whether it's an antivirus or a simple blocker to block coinhive.com.
Malwarebytes Premium just blocks that website and lets you keep accessing websites that use it without issues.

It's important to note that there are some legitimate sites such as CBS's Showtime that were caught using coinhive code as well.
The problem is that they already earn money through ads, but over 50% of people use AdBlock which is why they have to resort to other methods.

Well if the script will only use a part of the gpu it wont make a big difference at all, sure isnt ethical, but well some people did found a way to mine without need the miners and big investment. Some websites had incorporated those to get some extra revenue to keep their websites alive, i believe faucets will have thoose since it can became an extra source of income, and will be hard to keep trace of all websites using those.

I honestly don't see the problem.  They don't have to actually install malicious software on your computer to do this new browser mining.  

Having ads on their website is a slight inconvenience to the user.  Having a script to mine Monero still allows the user to access their site, but it doesn't bother the user at all for the website to make revenue using their CPU power.

It may be a bit of a shock at first to realise that websites are doing this, and perhaps it would be a good idea for them to ask before they start doing this rather than doing it without their users' permission, but it's really not so bad.

If you really don't like websites doing this for some reason, just install a good adblocker or antivirus and it should handle it.

As long as the website disclose that they will be using your computing power when you visit the site, it won't be a problem. It is their service after all

If you think you do not stay too long especially if you think that these types of sites can be made it may not be legal but this site may be related to the profits You can also set up a system and you do not have any problems

from what i have understood about these mining sites i can say these sites run special scripts through your browser to mine altcoins (monero to be exact) and scripts can always be blocked by twerking your browser, possibly by disabling Javascript even you may be able to block all of them pretty easily. but i have seen extensions out there for different browsers that can do this much simpler. you can install one of them to prevent this abuse.

There are more than 500 million users affected by in-browser mining. Most of these websites have a shady rep, torrent or adult sites. CoinHive is a better alternative to irritating ads, but since CoinHive can't forbid webmasters from stealth mining, webmasters should ask users permission to drain their CPU resources.

If you have adblocker installed then CoinHive enforces an explicit opt-in, AuthedMine. The AuthedMine miner will not start without an user's consent.

Apart from Adblocker, you can use Chrome extensions like No Coin and minerBlock to block in-browser mining.

I saw that and make sure it didnt do anything bad to my pc and I was ok with it. I don't see the problem because it's a way for some websites survive and pay at least the hosting fee, and as I made my search I also saw that this mining wasnt worth unless you have more than 1 million visitors daily because the mining results are awful. You can block those websites by just installing an extension from Google Chrome called No Coin. Chrome has said that will ban websites from their search page if they keep using this tool.

Not really a criminal offense but they are using your CPU for mining monero and if you have a lot of loads of applications that are open on your window at the same time, you are the one that will be affected of it. They are with CPU mining as they are earning more there. When I'm visiting a website, I keep on checking the process and usage of my CPU and if goes crazy at 75%-100% I'm shutting down the browser and will restart my PC.

I think it's a criminal offense mainly because it is a pirate site. The site is illegal to operate in the first place but if the site is a legal site, there is no problem with that

We are talking about the mining thing, we know that they are a pirate site and yes it's a criminal offense and it has been suited by the authorities even before. I just don't know if the owner was freed or there are people who are working under him. But with the usage of their visitors CPU usage I think that's not a criminal offense but if we talk about the whole site, yes they are operating as illegal.

Allot of web developers or using this web based browser mining with their website now smartly,
I my self can implement this in website before doing so I will be doing my research to see if this method is legal. ;)

I don't really mind that websites do this, just because I'm not really affected because I'm using NoScript.
It could actually become a better revenue-model than advertising, if it's done with the users' consent though.

I personally wouldn't really mind lending my processing power for mining if it's only active when I'm on their website and if they ask for permission first.

Guys, I don't think you need to worry so much about it. Nowadays so many sites are using this in their sites. And you cannot do anything against it. in my opinion, website mining wont damage your PC because generally after visiting the site for 10 or 30 minutes, we actually close the website. If you forget to close the site , then it will be a problem because it may heat up the CPU. The real problem with this mining sites is it makes our PC laggy when the site is open.

Lol - true - I guess in this instance ethics isn't a major concern - either for the users or owners. Outside of the pirate bay though - what if you were paying for a Netflix subscription and they were stealing cycles from your CPU in a way that you would never know - would you care?

Also there's no point on complaining if you are the kind of person who is very sensitive with CPU usage and temperature. Illegal Sites can do what they want.

It is not possible to mine Bitcoin through a website. You can mine Bitcoin only by using ASICs. Probably you are talking about mining Monero. It was quite popular lately and some websites have implemented it. I think it's better than ads unless it doesn't use 100% of my CPU. Laptop users had a hard time when they weren't controlling it.

I disagree, it is possible to mine a really small amount of bitcoin with the mentioned code. One of the bitcoin blogs in my country has already tried it just as an experiment (and they have marked the website to let the readers know), and the effect was really little. Some of the antiviruses among the readers were also detected the code in the website and the page was not allowed to load, so it was not a profitable thing.

This is true they are mining monero and most likely other websites are also using the code to mine with the end user. Also this was supposed or compensate with the advertisement. It can be profitable on their end and can really stop the annoyong ads on the website but i think mining without the end users knowledge or permission is not good and could be illegal. I hope in the future antivirus can detect websites that mine monero and just give you an option if want to continue with the site.on that way they are sure that the end user is agreeing with the website to mine on their end.

I mean it's relatively simple to find out if a website is using your CPU by monitoring the CPU usage. At the end of the day at the current difficulty of Bitcoin it's literally pointless of doing this for anyone except for experimental/testing.

This is not new there is a lot of websites and games using this kind of trick stealing your computing power and use it to mine while you are playing their games. i'd become admin of a private server games and some script are attach to login page of the game then if the game starts then the mining will start too. so that is why some of game has a big specification requirements.

even i heard of such a situation it is actually bad it gives bitcoin a bad reputation website should depend on ad for generating revenie if they use their users computer to mine it might not be stable after sometime aa particular mining equipment  is always required for mininh

This is as shady as it gets isn't this illegal? I've heard of this before and a lot of the time they used to use your processing power to mine alt coins because it was much easier.

i think if other people mining bitcoin without permission to us then i think its illegal and forbidden but unfortunately we can not where is the software hiding in our computer or android. but i think if we have a good antivirus that can detect the virus or the source code, i think we can prevent the apps is run in background process.

I don't think there is any kind of software that takes care of mining without permission, it's their website that does all the shady stuff, this is one of the easy ways for pirate sites to earn revenues and even though it's illegal they do it because pirating is also illegal.

After  developing any site for any purpose, make sure there is adequate security. Hackers will always make an attempt but if the site is protected the developer can go to sleep.

I may also be because the people who stole it and the person does not have a job, hopefully it will not happen

is it true that website can used for mining bitcoin? how can it will happen, as i know is website is work above the browser and if website can used for bitcoin mining maybe the browser have 100% privilege for access the cpu, can somebody tell me how it works?