Ad campaign runs cryptocurrency miners while unwitting users watch videos

Re:Ad campaign runs cryptocurrency miners while unwitting us... by klodolph on Friday January 26, 2018 @03:47PM (#16242761)

The payoff isn't good enough for this to support add-free services, and the payoff gets worse as crypto becomes more popular. Then there's the fact that you might be browsing from a battery-powered device.

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Re:Ad campaign runs cryptocurrency miners while unwitting us... by nopriorarrests on Friday January 26, 2018 @04:33PM (#16243077)

>The payoff isn't good enough for this to support add-free services

Hmm, wait. How it works, then?

Let's say I'm paying 1$ to display malicious ad which mines something. BTC.

If amount of mined BTC is lower than 1$, the whole operations becomes unprofitable. Why should I pay 1$ to mine 90 cents via ad?

If people are running this operation on scale, it should be profitable. But then payoff is by definition good enough to support ad-free service. Instead of taking 1$ from advertiser, google can theoretically mine 1$ on my PC and let me watch video without ads.

What do I miss?

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Re:Ad campaign runs cryptocurrency miners while unwitting us... by sigstoat on Friday January 26, 2018 @04:44PM (#16243138)

you still get to display an advertisement. so it isn't "mined BTC > $1 --> success"; it is "mined BTC + expected value of running scam ad > $1 --> success"

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Re:Ad campaign runs cryptocurrency miners while unwitting us... by debt on Friday January 26, 2018 @06:28PM (#16243749)

I think his point was a hypothetical without the advertising component. Like if they just embedded bitcoin miners in every page that displayed a youtube video.

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Re:Ad campaign runs cryptocurrency miners while unwitting us... by nopriorarrests on Friday January 26, 2018 @04:52PM (#16243181)

Good point! Thank you.

PS: Also, I wonder what other sites could be affected. Requirement is "user spending a lot of time on a page", so maybe blogging services with long posts, or shady sites with online sports broadcasts. Ugh, adblocker slowly becomes a requirement for modern web.

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