[2017-12-13] Starbucks using customers laptop to mine digital currency

[SlipMart]

                                                     


Starbucks using customers laptop to mine digital currency


Starbucks accused of using customers laptop to mine digital currency.

A Starbucks customer from Buenos Aires said he found the popular global coffee chain giant using his laptop for illegal Bitcoin mining.

Noah Dinkin found that when his laptop connected to Starbucks free Wi-Fi, it would be exploited to encrypt digital currency mining, and he released a screenshot on December 2 to prove it (as shown below)

Read more: https://bitzamp.com/starbucks-using-customers-laptop/

[Nilda]

Conspiracy Theory or Fake News? Considering the number of laptop users at any given time at Starbucks, the company would be probably worth trillions by now.

[Emoclaw]

Conspiracy Theory or Fake News? Considering the number of laptop users at any given time at Starbucks, the company would be probably worth trillions by now.

This is real, here is an arguably more reputable source: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gyd5xq/starbucks-wi-fi-hijacked-peoples-laptops-to-mine-cryptocurrency-coinhive
This was only in one store and Starbucks didn't know (most likely) or were testing it out. They resolved the issue a few days later.

From the article: "Last week, we were alerted to the issue and we reached out to our internet service provider—the Wi-Fi is not run by Starbucks, it's not something we own or control,"

[Jet Cash]

Well I refuse to use Starbucks or their associated companies because of the open support for the Deep State. It seems a pretty stupid thing to do if it is Starbucks that is doing it.  They won't be doing it for the money if they are, they will be mining Bitcoin to remove it from the market to destabilise Bitcoin. This would appear to be the new game they are playing with Amazon, Ebay and other globalist organisations joining in the Bitcoin extraction.

Whilst it is true that they use a third party to manage their WiFi, all of these "free" WiFi providers start you off with a splash page, and that would be where the malware could be activated. I've installed Wireshark, and I really must start to explore the activities of the Internet majors. Microsoft Cortana is one major threat, and a lot of the cloud services appear to be suspect.

[bit-freedom]

What a shocking news. I can’t believe such a big organisation will resort to this. IMO, most likely, it is an insider job or someone from the wifi company.

[Turkish88]

This was capability test of wi-fi networks, Experement done - from wi-fi network avialable running mining software.

[HabBear]

Trying to stop the unjustified hate toward Starbucks for this one - it was the wifi provider, not Starbucks, that was engaged in the nefarious activity. And that means that public wifi at other stores or public locations could have also done resulted in the same violation.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/security/man-discovers-code-used-for-bitcoin-mining-after-using-wifi-at-starbucks/news-story/725cbd2823eef79416bf5752454720d8

a Starbucks spokesman said the problem was with the internet service provider and not with the franchise itself.

This brings up a broader issue with just having to click "accept" when engaging with another network. There's so little security anything could happen!

[Iranus]

Nope.  In one Starbucks, the wifi was used in order to mine Monero on customers' laptops.

This wasn't even Starbucks doing it - it was the third party that provides their wifi.  And even if it was Starbucks, it wouldn't necessarily be intentional.  It could just be a rogue employee or attacker.

I won't be clicking on these articles with stupid titles like that.

[jseverson]

It really is clickbait. Media companies tend to sensationalize, and this is just another example. Nice catch for the user though. I wouldn't even check. Still, how is this legally? I wouldn't classify it as an attack, but it does border on exploitation.

I read an article somewhere that these in-browser mining scripts could replace ads in the future. Thepiratebay tested them recently and also got caught. I personally don't think it's a good idea because who knows what else the scripts can do, but eh.

[GreatOrchid]

And do you really think that this is an "honest" practice? of course that it is not.

I have been in Argentina, if you do not know, this happened in there, in Buenos Aires, it is a great country, only that it is not safe at all, a lot of thiefs are all around the streets the whole time, so i didn't had a good time in there.


But i went to starbucks with my laptop, it was a hassle to connect to the WiFi signal, it took more than five minutes to connect, it worked like the old Internet explorer.

It seems that the one who installed the script was just an employee, and they are going to put him in jail.

He is not millionaire, but maybe he has now a few thousand dollars on his pocket.