One of the tendencies of attack to our computers is called cryptohacking. The extraction of power from our CPUs without our consent for a third party to use this power in the mining of cryptocurrencies, almost always Monero, has affected millions of users in the world. Unfortunately this is not a trend that is going to disappear, so that it is up to the users to take extreme precautions and try to keep up with this type of attack to prevent them effectively.
Not a few are the websites that see and maintain in cryptojacking a source of income, an alternative way in the absence of traditional ways of obtaining benefits, such as advertising through space providers and the schemes we know. One of these sites that relapses in these adventures is The Pirate Bay (TPB), who have restarted their cryptocurrency mining activities by incorporating software that extracts power from the CPU’s of its visitors.
The truth is that cryptocurrency mining is the main or only source of income for controversial websites such as TPB. In fact on that website a moderator of the site explains that the mining software can be “easily blocked” by users, but we all know that this is not quite so, and that doing so requires resources such as mine blockers, just to mention the most immediate.
By the middle of 2017, TPB was doing its bit with the cryptocurrency mining of its users, which began to move a strong wave of complaints from many users who observed that their computers presented severe complications of RAM when visiting said website. After the notorious massive complaint, its moderators admitted to having been using the mining software of Monero Coinhive. It was not at all pleasant anyway, and we wrote about it here.
TPB retaking the use of such software only confirms that it is a fundamental source of income for them. An example of this in practice is that although the mining configuration in 2017 TPB set it to 0.6, the configuration of July 2018 has a value of 0.9 of acceleration.
Cases like those of TPB are an illustrative example of how some sites are being managed with the issue of mining with CPU power not authorized by visitors. Although the supermoderer TPB expressed his annoyance at the implementation of the software again on the site, and encouraged the users to avoid the miner, explaining how to do it. And perhaps the most important quote: “… if you’re ever in TPB without an ad blocker, you’re doing bad.”
In any case, TPB continues to use the power of the CPUs of its visitors, something that not everyone knows, and if they enter in an unprepared way in that torrent, they will have to observe how the performance of their computers is significantly compromised. Browsers like Chrome or Firefox have available blockers like No Coin that we recommend installing.
