Is it possible my Antminer S2 had been hijacked?

[imajeff]

Antminer S2 using Bitminter (backup Slush's but doesn't say it switched to that).  Has been running nonstop the past week. I started wondering why I didn't have the next payment when I should have by now, so looked at the transaction history on bitminter.com...

Was getting payments each shift multiple per day but suddenly nothing between 8/7 12:29 and 8/10 15:48? How is that possible?! Averaging near 1 TH/s and stable, what could be going on or something I don't know about payments?

I know I have a lot to learn about mining but don't know where to look now. I picture someone routinely changing my miner to work for them instead over some period of time but how to find out..

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[cloverme]

There's a story out there right now about hackers that took over streaming of mining data from ISPs, but likely something more basic. Check that your miner is actually hashing, check that your payout address on your pool hasn't changed. Check with the pool support to see if something isn't working with their payout. At 1th/s, you should be getting about 0.02 a day... I'd switch pools though, as a test you could switch over to slush or ghash.

[imajeff]

Thank you, it is certainly more exciting to think somebody took over the stream beyond my computers. That sounds quite easy because the security of the whole thing is pitiful. Also I recently changed ISP because internet started failing every day, possibly related to mining but not directly.

It's good to check a bunch of things regularly. Here is what I know to check on the S2:

1. Passwords have well-known defaults and SSH reverts every time the miner reboots. Avoid defaults when possible. It's not safe to assume they can't get in by remote even if it only claims to allow logins from the local network. The web access couldn't be changed for a long time but a recent firmware upd finally fixed it. I've wondered if it broke something else because that's when this started.

2. I can see hashing on the LCD often as I walk by and on web interface I check /cgi-bin/minerStatus.cgi GH/s (avg) currently 1000.31. Correct stratum bitminter URL and user name where all the work is being done.
Now I'm forgetting what was normal before with these in case it shows the problem (seems a lot discarded anyway):
Getwoks    34286
Accepted   436643
Rejected   7702
HW         153499
Utility    26.25
Discarded  15199392
Stale      161
LocalWork  283898707

3. Bitminter numbers should agree with the miner(s).
Last payment still 2014-08-10 15:48 in the transaction history, the typical amount. Compare in Statistics -> Shifts with completed shifts:
2014-08-11 09:57  Your Ghps 967.4  score 0.063493% work 5,012,480
2014-08-11 03:46  Your Ghps 973.7  score 0.064371% work 5,088,256
2014-08-10 21:31  Your Ghps 979.6 ...
(all around 6 hr apart)

4. Keep dust out of heatsinks. It stopped getting over 1TH during the hottest month here but I found dust balls clogging the edge where fans blow into the heatsink fins. Dusting the boards jumped right back up above 1TH (avoid static buildup when cleaning them).
 --

Well, I was sure we get paid relatively steady by the shift but I notice a post on bitcointalk 8/9 that says "longest block ever", "Almost 3 Days !!!" and wonder if that has something to do with it. I haven't been able to comprehend how many different ways have been worked out in all kinds of pools to handle payout.

Thanks again.

[imajeff]

In case anyone reads this and still wonders, here's a follow-up:

It was only because the luck was bad longer than usual. Now has been pretty good. I had been confused whether my current pool pays more like variable predicted average based on how they've been doing or just when we find blocks. Actually I prefer this way, just got confused by reading so many articles about all different ways of doing it.