<story><title>Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/03/apps-with-millions-of-google-play-downloads-covertly-mine-cryptocurrency/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>devindotcom</author><text>This is pretty hilarious. Given how small the load can be to automatically contribute hashes to a pool for ___coin, I expect more of these in the future, but smarter. Runs for 5 seconds per minute on ten million devices for six months? That&amp;#x27;s no joke with some of the hardware out there.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;this&lt;/i&gt; close to a victimless crime (that is, unless the victim gets their CPU&amp;#x2F;GPU fried, as has happened with these nets before). But what about apps that use spare cycles while you&amp;#x27;re plugged in, or above 75% battery, or between hours x and y, to mine dogecoins for charity? People would voluntarily submit to that!</text></comment>
<story><title>Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/03/apps-with-millions-of-google-play-downloads-covertly-mine-cryptocurrency/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>changdizzle</author><text>This is alarmingly similar to the ESEA situation where ESEA (a premium membership gaming community) discreetly built a bitcoin miner into their anti-cheat client [1], fried some users&amp;#x27; graphics cards and were found out then fined $1MM. [2]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/2/4292672/esea-gaming-network-bitcoin-botnet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theverge.com&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;5&amp;#x2F;2&amp;#x2F;4292672&amp;#x2F;esea-gaming-network...&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/11/e-sports/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wired.com&amp;#x2F;wiredenterprise&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;e-sports&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>