Secret Bitcoin mining code added to e-sports software sparks outrage
Competitive video gaming community E-Sports Entertainment Association secretly updated its client software with Bitcoin-mining code that tapped players' computers to mint more than $3,600 worth of the digital currency, one of its top officials said Wednesday.
The admission by co-founder and league administrator Eric ‘lpkane’ Thunberg came amid complaints from users that their ESEA-supplied software was generating antivirus warnings, computer crashes, and other problems. On Tuesday, one user reported usage of his power-hungry graphics processor was hovering in the 90-percent range even when his PC was idle. In addition to consuming electricity, the unauthorized Bitcoin code could have placed undue strain on the user's hardware since the mining process causes GPUs to run at high temperatures.
"Turns out for the past 2 days, my computer has been farming bitcoins for someone in the esea community," the person with the screen name ENJOY ESEA SHEEP wrote. "Luckily I have family in the software forensics industry."
About five hours later, a separate user posted evidence of the ESEA software client included the Bitcoin code. The user also provided instructions showing how other ESEA players can check to see if their computers are running the secret program.
A few hours later, Thunberg published his own post disclosing that ESEA software had included the Bitcoin miner for a little over two weeks and deposited a little more than 29 BTC into three wallets under the control of ESEA officials. The digital currency was regularly converted into US dollars and netted a total of $3,602.21 as of Wednesday. The figures were in stark contrast to an earlier post that said the Bitcoin code ran only for a few days and generated only about $280 worth of bitcoins.
"So first the bad news, this is way more shady than I originally thought, and as the person who is ultimately responsible for everything it's 100% my fault," Thunberg wrote in the later post. He went on to say the ESEA client software had been updated to remove the mining code and that all of the money generated by user machines would be put into a prize pot. He also agreed to give users of ESEA's premium service one free month.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05 ... s-outrage/
Competitive video gaming community E-Sports Entertainment Association secretly updated its client software with Bitcoin-mining code that tapped players' computers to mint more than $3,600 worth of the digital currency, one of its top officials said Wednesday.
The admission by co-founder and league administrator Eric ‘lpkane’ Thunberg came amid complaints from users that their ESEA-supplied software was generating antivirus warnings, computer crashes, and other problems. On Tuesday, one user reported usage of his power-hungry graphics processor was hovering in the 90-percent range even when his PC was idle. In addition to consuming electricity, the unauthorized Bitcoin code could have placed undue strain on the user's hardware since the mining process causes GPUs to run at high temperatures.
"Turns out for the past 2 days, my computer has been farming bitcoins for someone in the esea community," the person with the screen name ENJOY ESEA SHEEP wrote. "Luckily I have family in the software forensics industry."
About five hours later, a separate user posted evidence of the ESEA software client included the Bitcoin code. The user also provided instructions showing how other ESEA players can check to see if their computers are running the secret program.
A few hours later, Thunberg published his own post disclosing that ESEA software had included the Bitcoin miner for a little over two weeks and deposited a little more than 29 BTC into three wallets under the control of ESEA officials. The digital currency was regularly converted into US dollars and netted a total of $3,602.21 as of Wednesday. The figures were in stark contrast to an earlier post that said the Bitcoin code ran only for a few days and generated only about $280 worth of bitcoins.
"So first the bad news, this is way more shady than I originally thought, and as the person who is ultimately responsible for everything it's 100% my fault," Thunberg wrote in the later post. He went on to say the ESEA client software had been updated to remove the mining code and that all of the money generated by user machines would be put into a prize pot. He also agreed to give users of ESEA's premium service one free month.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05 ... s-outrage/