Bitcoin Forum

I am convinced that Botnets will destroy mining by conventional means.  Innovation, (though illegal) will kill conventional miners.  The incentives are just too high.  1,000,000 infected computers (not hard to achieve at all with a Botnet, in reality the more successful Botnets have 10 million or more) will drive the difficulty through the roof!!!

Botnets to Bitcoin is what GPU's were to Bitcoin 9 months ago (less the illegal part).  The smart ones are packing their gear and selling off now.  I just shut down a 26gh network and now with the help of friends we are packing it up and preparing it for shipping, for sale.

While Botnets are illegal as all hell, that will not stop people.  Again all you need it 20-50 successful Botnets running to shut down the miners of today.  So that’s 20-50 people WORLDWIDE operating their individual Botnets.  Do you really believe that there are not 50 people on the planet that have the know how to do it and would not do it?  Do the math people. :'( >:(

Botnets were discussed so many times before on this forums. Conclusion: they are not really useful for mining. People did math. For details, use the search function.

so you shutdown a still profitable 26Ghps farm for fear of something that could possibly happen, but probably wont?

makes sense  ???

Famous last words.


I can read smarty pants, they are WRONG.  Its called innovation (all be it illegal).   Botnets will harness the GPU's on the infected systems, sure as Botnets harnessed the "power" of spam 15 years ago.

botnet is MUCH more valuable than being used for mining bitcoin. Using botnet for mining coins is stupid and asking to get caught. Running a contract DDOS business is much more profitable.

Yep: "It's the opportunity cost baby!"  ;)

You made me laught :)

I actually know a few people who have coded there own bitcoin botnets, 1 person got a 24 hr ban for having so many different ip connections to deepbit mining pool, deepbit asked him to explain the mass amount of different connections to the pool.. All he needs to do is set up his own bitcoin server and mine for him self from the bitcoin botnet and no issues at all... he didn't tell me exact amount of bots he has mining but I imagine it hit the couple of thousands..

All those Intel integrated graphics working in unison...

Someotherguy is most likely bluffing.  I've been on these fourms long enough to be able to recognize thevfalse bravado.  Obviously compensating for something...possibly low self confidence or self worth. So they make up for that by pretending that they own huge mining GPu clusters, as if that is a genuine contribution to the bitcoin economy.

Keep in mind, someotherguy, that it is more difficult to obtain access to GPU device than to just user level access to just user-level CPU cycles since GPU access needs OS permission.  Of course these mining bots will arise, but hopefully the popular use of bitcoin will lead to the public using more secure OSes like Linux.

An infected PC *might* stay infected if the botnet owner just has the PC hit this or that server once in a while.

But running the CPU and/or GPU full bore?  Guess what -- that's going to lead the the AOLer saying, "Hey, my PC is really slow!" and they'll have their grandson wipe the machine with a fresh copy of Windows XP. When a machine is formatted/wiped/re-installed, the botnet loses the machine.

Then the botnet owner has to get Mr. Novice PC User to click on a "Click here to restore access to your Paypal account." e-mail again. If he doesn't fall for it a 2nd time, that PC is off the botnet for good.

Matthew

The fact that you think there are 20-50 botnets with over a million bots, shows that you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.


This cements you as an idiot.  How many botnets do you think in the history of computing have had over a million bots?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet#Historical_List_of_Botnets

You misunderstand the concept of a botnet and viruses/malware.

Good botnet controllers and malware writers do their best to make it so that their meddling isn't detected by the average user. While we make check our router logs and notice something is up, or watch CPU usage spike randomly and realize something is wrong, the average user won't. In terms of bitcoin, all the botnet controller has to do is set the miner to a low aggression so that your average user will not detect it.
And about the paypal scams and such, those are usually just emails sent out by the botnet. Your computer doesn't have to be on the botnet to be subject to such spam attacks.

I think the OP is overestimating the impact of botnets though. Like another guy said, the botnet people probably have more profitable things to do with their time. Paypal scams and nigerian spam probably nets them a lot of money. Let's say the have a 100,000 botnet and each system averages ~3mhash/s. That's 300ghash/s. That's a lot of power. Some things to take into account though... Botnet PCs aren't always on are they? Surely some users must turn off their PC. And to think botnets will be accessing GPU miners is a little far fetched I would say. Think of the type of user and the type of computer that is in botnets, probably not too many powerful GPU's out there. Plus it would be a pain to configure each and every computer with the proper drivers and mining configuration for different GPUs, whereas a CPU client could be put onto every system easily.

I have no real idea which would be more profitable, typical botnet business or bitcoin mining, but my guess is that their typical business nets them more money.

That's nothing, I just shut down my 100 GHash/sec array because it kept filling my attack zepplin with too much hot air - and I don't have oxygen bottles plentiful enough to keep cabin pressure going. That'll put a dent in my party plans, nobody likes to be a sick guest aboard a luxury airship.

Please, if you are in your underground volcano lair, just pull the thermocouples from the hot magma and stop mining, it's going to get someone hurt.

"Keep in mind, someotherguy, that it is more difficult to obtain access to GPU" -   No it's not, really it's not that hard.


No BLUFF it is down and boxed.  Good luck all.  See you on "trading floor".

If any this this cements you as the fool. 

1.  I guessed you missed the exponential curve in Botnet activity listed in the wiki.  Also this list is FAR from compete by anybody's standard.  In fact it is not even close to the number of active Botnets currently in use, or that have been used.

2. The wiki NEED's many revisions as posted in the wiki itself.

So something with an -f 200 (allowing even 1080p to be played without stutter) hitting the GPU and not CPU with no  visible impact on task manager,  that is definitely something worth trying.

Where is your proof that there are more than a few million member botnets?  Do you have any?  No, I know you don't.

People pay good money for botnet rentals--much more than you could get mining bitcoins.

Bitcoin mining would only be used on botnets that are otherwise idle unless the operator is a complete idiot

Rofl.

EVERYBODY GET OUT KNOW, THE ZEPPS CANT TAKE IT!

All the important points were already posted in this thread & before if you just bothered to search.

Point in case: Very few infected machines have any harvestable GPU's. The vast majority are compromised Windows 98 and Windows XP SP1 machines that are 5-10 years old and run without any sort of antivirus or firewalls.

However, many of them have modern internet connection speeds such as 1mb/s or even 10mb/s+. This makes them very valuable for denial of service attack & extortion business.

If you have constant strain on old CPU's, even computer illiterate people will start noticing & you will potentially lose parts of your botnet for no reason at all.

Is it worth it for the 0.5mhash/s you would get from an average machine with a Sempron?
No. Simply put, utilizing a botnet for bitcoin mining is a waste of money at this point (machines in botnets are each worth a monetary amount, plus opportunity cost as mentioned above).

It should have been utilized when difficulty was in the 4-5 numbers. Remote installing miners on all your machines at 1m+ difficulty is a stupid business plan considering how much more you could earn just by renting out those machines.

I don't know anything about this but I can still tell this is nonsense. I don't know exactly what those existing botnets do but I am pretty sure they are about as intrusive as .bat loop with a ping command running in the background...

When you start mining on someone computer they will notice. It will be hot, noisy and slow. It is enough for most people to have there computer looked at. Or they will just buy a new computer, yes there are loads of people that just go and buy a new computer because the one they have is slowed down by malware...

Anyway those computers would be wiped or replaced much much faster then current botnets.

So what have we learned so far? 2 years later

We learned that no matter how irrelevant an old topic is somebody will dredge it up  ???

Genius :D

Also what's with all the overreaction?  If mining is profitable right now but may not be in X months then just keep mining for another X months and shut down then. WTF, so simple.

And that someone created his own, bitcoin specific botnet aimed at people with high end graphics cards.


http://kotaku.com/e-sports-league-mined-bitcoins-with-subscribers-comput-486205191

ESEA League, one of the largest PC gaming leagues, has admitted to putting code into the league's client software to "mine" bitcoins, the open-source Internet currency now exchanging for around $130 per. The league is offering free memberships as some members complain the code damaged their video cards.