In case you haven’t been following the tech news over the past few days, the Yahoo website was spreading malware through some of it’s ads in Europe. Not a big deal, and totally not related to Bitcoin. Or is it?
After examining the malware closely, it was clear that there was only one objective : mining Bitcoins on other people’s computers to create some sort of botnet.
Most “normal” users won’t have any significant hardware when it comes to mining Bitcoin efficiently. However, if you infect thousands, or tens of thousands of computers, all of that hardware combined might actually get you some acceptable hashing power.
Not like the people responsible for the malware would really care if it was efficient or not, as it’s not their hardware nor their electricity bills.
And in fairness, it would take a while before people would get it cleaned off their computers anyway. Let alone they would suspect something like Bitcoin mining would be slowing down their machines..
It is unfortunate for Bitcoin to make headlines like this, after the good news about Overstock accepting Bitcoin payments, which was announced yesterday.
But still, the future is looking good for Cryptocurrency in general. This is just a “flesh wound” in the ongoing battle of online payments systems.
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