That toolbar you downloaded is malware? Tough, read the EULA

  • 2 December 2013
  • 2 replies
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Userlevel 7
Badge +54
CPU-and-bandwidth-munching Bitcoin miners buried in freeware.

Security software vendor Malwarebytes has highlighted what it says is an increasing trend for malware authors to embed Bitcoin mining into things like browser toolbar helpers and search agents. That's not so new, but its latest observation is that the malware-peddlers are trying to tie up suckers with their license agreements.

According to this post, the miner in question is jhProtominer, and it's being installed by a crowd called We Build Toolbars (WBT).

WBT uses a custom installer, Monitor.exe, which it serves up from Amazon, to start up the Bitcoin miner on the user's system – and for people who have been dim enough to install its browser helpers, the sting in the tail is in the EULA:

    “As part of downloading a Mutual Public, [the name it uses for the installer – The Register] your computer may do mathematical calculations for our affiliated networks to confirm transactions and increase security. Any rewards or fees collected by WBT or our affiliates are the sole property of WBT and our affiliates.”
 
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2 replies

Userlevel 4
Badge +16
WOW! Talk about blatant!
Userlevel 3
Yea iv actually seen it before, but the user I seen have it also had one hell of a nasty rootkit and it was XP, so we sold him on a referb with windows 7 and a data transfer, I do currently mine with asics and it is fun, I don't have alot of coin yet but I plan on day trading at 30, a ways to go for that though, I'm only at 17, 😞 but that's not bad, still quite a bit of coin ?

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