A good Bitcoin mining rigis hard to find . They ’re expensive , they take up quad , they wrack up huge energy flyer . Not at all hard-nosed for your average ESEA game connection employee . Nefarious computer code that turns 14,000 of your users into an unknowledgeable personal bitcoin botnet ? Totallydoable .
Digital Drills : The Monster Machines that Mine Bitcoin
Like so many enceinte schemes , it must have seemed complete at the start , like Richard Pryor pulling half - centime out of thin air travel inSuperman III . ESEA is one of the largest competitive gaming leagues in North America , if not the world , with cash prizesapproaching $ 100,000each season . Its users are an elect strain , who use elect computer graphic cards — the kinds that can tardily , surely , reliablychurn out Bitcoinsif given a soft jog in the right counsel . Or in this typesetter’s case , were marched there at point .
The best / worst part ? The as - yet - unknown rogue employee did n’t even have to come up with any clever codification himself . ESEA did that second for him .
The Trojan Mine
Recently , ESEA decided to experiment with Bitcoin excavation . Specifically , with build up the feature into its product so that its users could , if they wanted to , harness their powerful GPUs for digital hard cash or else of digital kills . The company got deep enough into the examination stage that , accord to anESEA news release , ESEA even had it up and running on two of its administrators ’ fishing rig . And then , on April 13th , it pull the plug .
Or at least , they thought they did .
As thereleasegoes on to describe , one of the employees involve in the test decided that the code was too skillful to just desolate . In fact , it could be incredibly useful if you were enterprising enough — and immoral enough — to work out out how to deploy to the rigs of 14,000 of your internet ’s most valued penis . Just shroud it somewhere that they need but would never oppugn . Somewhere like , say , ESEA ’s anti - cheat client , the pride of the company .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhCQwj9atJ8
And that ’s where it hid , until a substance abuser — not ESEA — found out what was proceed on . Yesterday .
Quitting Time
At just after midnight yesterday , ESEA drug user unisolsz discovered that his GPU was being used for something other than , well , anything he designate . Specifically , that it was mine Bitcoins . He sent out a word of advice in the ESEA forum , and the company displume the plug .
In just those two weeks , though , the damage was done . The employee had wring up close to BTC30 , which is $ 3,713.55 in dollar today ( and either twice or half that tomorrow , give the unevenness of Bitcoin ) .
To help make thing right , ESEA is donating twice that amount to the American Cancer society , and — since it ’s still unsure on the nose which users were affected , and how many , and to what degree — increasing the prize pot by that much , as well . It ’s also offer free rank to mass who claim their graphics cards were damaged by being reverse into digital drills .
at last , it ’s not so much a victimless crime as an unquantifiable ; it ’s not like the hoi polloi regard lose money they already had , or were going to be mining their own Bitcoins anytime soon . But having your GPU manhandled remotely , and being indentured into botnet ; these are wrongs that do n’t have a price sequester to them , other than the anxiety of knowing how gentle it was to be compromise . [ ESEA , Kotaku , Wired ]
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