Posted on 11/30/2013 12:05:32 PM PST by Utilizer
Bitcoin miners are being allegedly bundled with third party potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) that come bundled with legitimate applications, a new report indicates.
According to a report by security company Malwarebytes third party applications that come bundled with legitimate applications and commonly known as potentially unwanted programs/applications (PUPs/PUAs) now come integrated with Bitcoin miners.
These miners surreptitiously carry out Bitcoin mining operations on the user’s system consuming valuable CPU time without explicitly asking for user’s consent. Because of the extensive mathematical calculations involved, the mining operation consumes a lot of CPU resource and renders the user’s system almost useless for regular operations.
(snip)
The user noted that even when the executable was deleted using “moveonboot to remove it at the next boot” feature of MBM, it “manifests & executes” with a new filename “jh1c.exe”.
“We did some research and found out that the file in question was a Bitcoin Miner known as “jhProtominer”, a popular mining software that runs via the command line”...
(Excerpt) Read more at techienews.co.uk ...
What do bitcoins come from that created value? There aren't even tulips at the end of the rainbow.
I still don’t get it. Like goggle, twitter and facebook, looks like nothing but vapor to me. And yet, some smart folks are making quite a bundle from them.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it turns out organized crime is behind it somewhere.
In this case, "organized crime" can mean anything up to Hezbollah, the Russian Mafia, the Taliban, or the Iranian secret police.
I'd say North Korea, but I think they're too stupid to have gotten this far.
On second thought, what sort of rock formations would one mine if looking for bitcoins?
Extrapolate that to the Internet, with more people trading things and LRNs and that is essentially what Bitcoins are.
Rather like trading stocks, or if you work for a bank, trading mortgages.
See post #6...
If you haven't heard of it by now it's already too late.
You mean like Social Security retirement benefits? Or like banks buying and selling mortgages to each other?
Bitcoins are still being used across the globe, last I checked. So are mortgage exchanges. Plus, Stocks trade and fluctuate all the time, but no one seems in a hurry to drop the practice.
It’s been reliable for me.
Bitcoin is great if you don’t want to be tracked.
That's just it. There are no baked goods, hens, mortgages or anything else. What do I do? Just tell someone you can have 3 quadroogles for one bitcoin?
It seems to me that the big boys in getting those computer keys to sing have come up with something out of nothing and everyone nods their heads, says "wow" and goes along because they don't want to look dumb.
How is it a Ponzi scheme? You either do not understand bitcoin, or you do not know what a Ponzi scheme is?
The whole bitcoin currency bubble will inevitably collapse when either:
This has nothing to do with BitCoin's reliability as you call it. It's just some unscrupulous schmuck trying to make some by putting malware on someone else's computer.
So, it’s like an IPO.
The source code is open. If it was going to be hacked, it would have been hacked years ago.
If you think it can be counter fitted, you really don’t understand how it works.
I am not saying this is perfect. I am saying that the concept is a significant paradigm shift. It is a major, and legitimate threat to the traditional banking system. Financial transactions where you cut out the middle man will be faster and cheaper.
The bitcoin may come and go...but the system will change how the currency world works.
“. I just don’t understand how money can be made just from running an algorithm”
My understanding is it can’t. The algorithms are required to support the storage and trading of the bitcoins. In other words, it’s overhead for the bitcoin operation for which you are paid minuscule amounts in bitcoin currency. I could be wrong, but that’s the way I read it.
If it sounds a bit like printing money with nothing behind it, well, it does to me too.
In many ways that is the best analogy.
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