Crypto miners abusing free CI

[hatshepsut93]

So, here's the article - link

For those who don't know, CI stands for Continuous Integration, it's a service for developers that automatically runs tests each time they make changes to the code, to check that new changes didn't break something. Some services are offering free tiers for beginner developers, small personal projects, free and open source projects, etc.

Here come the crypto miners. Because you can configure these tests anyway you want, it's essentially running code on someone's server for free, and some people put crypto mining scripts into their "tests" and then just run them over and over again. The article says that one such account can make $77 per month.

So, not only altcoin mining is causing GPU shortages, it's now also hurting software developing industry.

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[sana54210]

I would say that most probable outcome from this would probably be software moving towards something else, basically a fork, and doing it properly so that miners can't reach them. Think about it this way, miners only care about profits, they only care about how much money they could make, people build machines and mine eth with gpu, then they use their processor, their hardrive, their ram anything in there to make as much money as possible as a side income as well, it is really efficient in that way.

This is why if you leave a method to make money with their system, they will grind the last bit of money, whatever gives them extra 5 bucks per month will be abused to hell. This is why I suggest everyone to build their stuff miner resistant in order to make it more realistic and actually work, otherwise miners will destroy it for sure.

[Fortify]

Here come the crypto miners. Because you can configure these tests anyway you want, it's essentially running code on someone's server for free, and some people put crypto mining scripts into their "tests" and then just run them over and over again. The article says that one such account can make $77 per month.

So, not only altcoin mining is causing GPU shortages, it's now also hurting software developing industry.

Unfortunately there will always be someone who takes advantage and abuses free offerings out there. It's like the people who take a whole plate of samples at a supermarket, when they're only meant to take one small piece to test the product. It seems a little unfair to blame GPU shortages only on the miners, as it is driven by anyone who buys any cryptocurrency - if people weren't buying then the miners would not have the incentive. There are a variety of ways to handle such abuse but most of the time these companies burn out of cash quicker than they can adapt. There are possible ways to handle overusage like this but they require a lot of effort to solve - they could create a "holding fee" model, where you have to deposit a certain amount of cash and only get it returned when you decide to leave - after somebody has reviewed your account, or they could block your account automatically if it keeps consistently using a high load that would be unusual for a test script.

[fiulpro]

I would say that most probable outcome from this would probably be software moving towards something else, basically a fork, and doing it properly so that miners can't reach them. Think about it this way, miners only care about profits, they only care about how much money they could make, people build machines and mine eth with gpu, then they use their processor, their hardrive, their ram anything in there to make as much money as possible as a side income as well, it is really efficient in that way.

This is why if you leave a method to make money with their system, they will grind the last bit of money, whatever gives them extra 5 bucks per month will be abused to hell. This is why I suggest everyone to build their stuff miner resistant in order to make it more realistic and actually work, otherwise miners will destroy it for sure.

Well that's part of the whole thing. People find flaws , some report them and some abuse them.  People would scam anything and anyone if possible , A fork is much needed, but at the same time I do think it would be a perfect project for a idle team sitting in covid , it could give them a new project to work on.

People were also abusing sites by using VPN services in the restricted regions few months back but that thing has been banned from most servers as far as I can see (related to crypto and gambling sites)..so things will happen take this as in example ! Changes are much needed it's pandemic people will literally try anything..

[hatshepsut93]

I would say that most probable outcome from this would probably be software moving towards something else, basically a fork, and doing it properly so that miners can't reach them. Think about it this way, miners only care about profits, they only care about how much money they could make, people build machines and mine eth with gpu, then they use their processor, their hardrive, their ram anything in there to make as much money as possible as a side income as well, it is really efficient in that way.

On one hand, these companies could develop some algorithms that would help them detect crypto mining and ban such users, on the other hand it would cost them resources, and it's simpler to just shut down the free tier, as they were doing it just for community. Also, it could become an arms race - miners will be using some tricks to obfuscate their mining, companies will be using solutions to detect it.

At least Bitcoin doesn't cause too much problems, because it's mined on its own dedicated hardware, but altcoins are only causing problems to many industries. People used to advocate GPU or CPU mining because it's supposedly more decentralized, but practice shows that regular people don't care about mining even if they have the hardware, so mining is still done by farms.