UPDATED 06:20 EDT / DECEMBER 03 2013

NEWS

Bitcoin mining malware alert: Has your PC been hijacked?

By and large, Bitcoin miners tend to be decent folk, and so it’s always disappointing to hear stories of those who’re abusing the system. Such is the case with a company that goes by the name of Mutual Public a.k.a. We Build Toolbars a.k.a. Your Free Proxy, which was discovered by the security firm Malwarebytes to be installing Bitcoin mining software onto unwitting user’s computers – either through toolbars, or else a free proxy service and maybe even other, equally useless free software.

Malwarebytes’ investigation found that the software operates in the background, redirecting the computer’s resources to take part in Bitcoin mining operations in order to generate profits solely for Mutual Public. The company even goes as far as to legitimize what it’s doing, explaining in the small print that no-one reads exactly what it’s up to. Even worse, it seems that the toolbars are extremely difficult to remove once installed.

Very sneaky indeed – in effect, Mutual Fund has hit upon a way of legally hijacking people’s computers, and in doing so it can slow down their CPUs by as much as 50%, depending on the specs of their machine, claims Malwarebytes’ report. Given the astonishing rise in value of Bitcoin over the last few weeks, this means that Mutual Public is likely to be raking in a small fortune, whilst its ‘customers’ have to suffer with their computer’s speed reduced to a snail’s pace.

But it’s not only those who’ve installed the toolbars that’re being treated unfairly. One might argue that legitimate Bitcoin miners – those who user their own, extremely expensive hardware to mine them – are also losing out. The thing with Bitcoin miners is that they’re essential to keep the cryptocurrency’s complex system going. Mining is a kind of reward system for those who take the time to solve the complex algorithms that confirm and encrypt transactions made with Bitcoin, receiving money in exchange for solving ‘blocks’ of these algorithms. The only trouble is, these calculations take up vast amounts of CPU, hence the need for lots of expensive computer equipment to solve them.

While Mutual Public’s scheme may be ‘legal’, the fact that it uses other people’s computer’s (most likely without their knowledge) and hoards all of the profits is clearly unethical.

Okay, so the end user license agreement states what it’s malware-ridden products do, sort of:

COMPUTER CALCULATIONS, SECURITY: as part of downloading a Mutual Public, your computer may do mathematical calculations for our affiliated networks to confirm transactions and increase security. Any rewards or fees collected by WBT or our affiliates are the sole property of WBT and our affiliates.

But even so, it’s about as vaguely-worded as it’s possible to be, and clearly doesn’t represent the full facts. There’s no mention of the massive drain on CPU resources, nor the fact that the software has an uncanny ability to re-install itself once deleted – in other words, although it’s legal, there’s no hiding the fact that Mutual Public’s software is really malware, and no-one would download it if they knew what its real purpose was.


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