Botnet mining possible?

[couture]

Jus thinking out loud here... but would it in theory be possible to make a sneaky virus, that once on an infected machine, could then run quietly in the background a mining program... just a few Mh here and there, nothing so much that you would notice..

For example wannacry allegedly infected over 250,000 machines.. if each machine could contribute a mere 2mh/s or so.. that would be a network total of 500Gh!? Which... if mining etherium.. and using crypto compare to calculate rates as of today - 28th June 2017 that would be more than $2.2m per month!!


I'm sure.... there is a barrier to entry here that I'm missing (most likely the fact that building such a large botnet is no easy feat)

Ponderings appreciated

[1715248922]

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[Barmz]

This already exists for years.

But sadly, hacking 250,000 machines is illegal  

You must consider that :
- Most of computer's hardware will suck (I really think 95%+ of PCs)
- Normal people do not keep their computer up 24/7 but only 1-2 hours a day (maybe less than this)
- If the mining slows the computer too much, the victim will try to clean up his computer

So your average mining rate will probably be more like 0.02Mh/s than 2Mh/s. And how long will your zombies be able to mine?

[YIz]

People already use botnets for mining monero. CPU mining of course, GPU botnets are less common.

[Vann]

Actually the latest mining malware targets always on IOT devices such as routers, DVR's, IP cameras, etc. Usually it's more profitable for criminals to employ such devices in DDOS attacks though.