E-Sports League Stuffed Bitcoin Mining Code Inside Client Software 223
hypnosec writes "The E-Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA) gaming league has admitted to embedding Bitcoin mining code inside the league's client software. It began as an April Fools' Day joke idea, but the code ended up mining as many as 29 Bitcoins, worth over $3,700, for ESEA in a span of two weeks. According to Eric Thunberg, one of the league's administrators, the mining code was included as early as April. Tests were run for a few days, after which they 'decided it wasn't worth the potential drama, and pulled the plug, or so we thought.' The code was discovered by users after they noticed that their GPUs were working away with unusually high loads over the past two weeks. After users started posting on the ESEA forums about discovery of the Bitcoin mining code, Thunberg acknowledged the existence of a problem – a mistake caused a server restart to enable it for all idle users."
ESEA posted an apology and offered a free month of their Premium service to all players affected by the mining. They've also provided data dumps of the Bitcoin addresses involved and donated double the USD monetary value of the mined coins to the American Cancer Society.
Sounds handled fairly well (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, it was rather poor form to have started on this project, even as a joke, but it seems they've fessed up and handled it well.
Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely not, for an organization that is striving for legitimacy this is an extreme breach of trust.
Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely not, for an organization that is striving for legitimacy this is an extreme breach of trust.
So admitting wrongdoing, giving credit, and donating the money to a nonprofit is an "Extreme breach of trust"?
How do you figure that?
Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:5, Insightful)
I figure that because it happened in the first place, which is completely inexcusable. What were they thinking? What's to say it won't happen again? You know that old saying from Tennessee, well, from Texas, but probably from Tennessee too: fool me once, shame on, hmm, shame on you, fool me... well, you can't get fooled again.
Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:5, Insightful)
They hardly "admitted wrongdoing". They made up absurd stories about how it was all an April Fool's joke, and lied about how long it had been active and how much money they had made.
(Consider this: Which part of this "April Fool's joke" was supposed to actually be FUNNY? It was installed in secret. If it was hidden from you, how were you supposed to laugh at it?)
Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:5, Insightful)
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We're also supposed to take them at their word that only 29 bitcoins were mined. Sure they provided the dumps. How much are they holding back?
Less than twice the stated amount. Follow the money.
Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:5, Funny)
Consider this: Which part of this "April Fool's joke" was supposed to actually be FUNNY?
I ask myself that every time I visit /. on April 1st.
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Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:4, Insightful)
They're making amends for getting caught. Consider: "Tests were run for a few days, after which they 'decided it wasn't worth the potential drama."
They intentionally included the code. They were planning on continuing. The only reason they stopped is that the cons (user backlash, possible lawsuits) outweighed the pros (making money off of suckers). If their mining operation had been successful enough, they'd still be doing it now.
Hell, even EA didn't hide the contents of their games. People buying the new SimCity knew it would be online only (and to a lesser degree people buying Dead Space 3 knew it would have microtransactions) and still bought it knowing they would be unhappy. The real shitstorm happened because EA didn't do enough QA or server stability tests, and it continues with in-game advertising. So, yes, there is a difference. EA committed gross ineptitude. ESEA committed borderline fraud. But, trust who you will with your credit.
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And the point that GP, and up are trying to make is... Yup, they're apologizing for getting caught. Unlike most non-apologies, at least some good is coming out of it, and they're at least putting up a good show to show they're sorry.
That's better than the vast majority of non-apologies, and they're at least acknowledging that their image is important enough to them to try to make some amends.
I'm sure you paid all those speeding tickets that you could've been cited for, so I should just leave well enough a
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Absolutely not, for an organization that is striving for legitimacy this is an extreme breach of trust.
So admitting wrongdoing, giving credit, and donating the money to a nonprofit is an "Extreme breach of trust"?
How do you figure that?
They are only sorry because they got caught.
Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it shouldn't be illegal to rob a bank if you give the money back... right?
There is a problem with your post. They didn't rob a bank. So it's not like that at all.
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I guess I'm just so used to companies issuing non or backhanded apologies that when one actually does more than offer 10% off your next purchase, my outrage generator gets short circuited.
Thinking about it a bit more now that I realize that it wasn't just processing, but pulling in 100% CPU/GPU utilization, I'm a bit more upset. (mostly because how can you 'accidentally' leave in such a huge freaking mechanism for putting egg on your face)
Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because this was not a bank robbery.
You might as well say, "Because it's bad to damage streetlights, but fine to set fires?" The robbing a bank analogy just doesn't need to be applied because the situation doesn't require an analogy. Everyone on this site is capable of understanding the technical details of what they did, we don't need to obfuscate the problem by unnecessarily applying analogies.
Besides, it didn't even TRY to include a car.
Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, it was rather poor form to have started on this project, even as a joke, but it seems they've fessed up and handled it well.
... After they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar, yes. Meanwhile, were I, a non-corporation, to do something like this, the FBI would be coming through my door with a bunch of dudes with shotguns for an enhanced "interview" over my connections to terrorism, money laundering, etc.
So, my question is... whether intentional or accidental, it happened. That means it's a crime. So... where is the charge sheet, mmm?
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What they did was a mistake and it was wrong to do so. But are we sure it's actually a crime?
Looking at the facts:-
- ESEA released software which people downloaded and willingly installed so it would be a big stretch to call it a bot net.
- The software did what it said on the tin but it also did something else without advertising this fact to the users.
- What it was doing is probably only relevant if mining bitcoins was illegal anyway.
So what makes ESEA's software any different from operating systems which
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"The software did what it said on the tin but it also did something else without advertising this fact to the users."
And I sued the fuck out of EA for the EXACT SAME THING.
Looks like ESEA needs a visit from my legal team.
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Except that this and that have absolutely no relevance to one another. That's like comparing the Hot Coffee code hidden inside GTA: San Andreas to a rootkit.
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Sure, it was rather poor form to have started on this project, even as a joke, but it seems they've fessed up and handled it well.
... After they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar, yes. Meanwhile, were I, a non-corporation, to do something like this, the FBI would be coming through my door with a bunch of dudes with shotguns for an enhanced "interview" over my connections to terrorism, money laundering, etc.
So, my question is... whether intentional or accidental, it happened. That means it's a crime. So... where is the charge sheet, mmm?
There is a subtle difference that you seem to be missing. The difference is 'mens rea'.
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Well, corporations are people [wikipedia.org], so a criminal charge against the ESEA should be forthcoming.
Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sounds handled fairly well (Score:5, Funny)
What the GP said still stands. If he, as a person and not a corporation had done exactly that, admitting it, and donating the results would fall very short from freeing his ass from prosecution. He would more likely than not end in jail.
Shhh... don't spoil it. I'm enjoying the slashdotters trying to rage against overbearing police authority and misunderstanding technology ... while at the same time having to balance out corporate versus private individual rights, and for the bonus round it's something that ties directly in with their online privacy. I got some popcorn, wanna share? This is gonna be good...
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I've got some pizza.
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If any of the users were running their own bitcoin mining software then they definitely would have been stealing resources.
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Sounds handled fairly well? WTF? (Score:3)
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Sure, it was rather poor form to have started on this project, even as a joke, but it seems they've fessed up and handled it well.
No they didn't.
for example he said it was going to a S14 Pot: http://play.esea.net/index.php?s=forums&d=topic&id=492152 [esea.net]
Yet now it's supposedly going to charity.
I bet it goes into the corporations or the CEO's pocket.
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While I think this was egregious, I also think it's wrong to immediately jump to malicious intent on the part of the companies management or PR folk.
I think it's far more likely that an employee was in a position to make a change and managed to sneak it past others, and management just caught asleep at the wheel. It's not too hard for me to imagine a situation where management told the employee to stop, the employee reported that they did, but either they didn't, or may have been incompetent enough to not p
Computer Trespass (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Computer Trespass (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, but instead the company involve just pays a fine. That's the only way companies pay for crimes...with dollars.
Even if you're BP and you severely damage one of the world's oceans and kill an uncountable amount of wildlife and destroy whole ecosystems.
Re:Computer Trespass (Score:5, Funny)
See, BPs big mistake was to put out the fire. As everyone knows:
Birds soaked in oil: evil
Birds fried in boiling oil : tasty!
Don't forget the human victims (Score:5, Insightful)
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One sparked a citiy wide lock down and door to door manhunt for the responsible party.
Presumably out of fear he would strike again.
In the other, the responsible party is well known, and remains a free man.
No one thinks he intentionally blew up his fertilizer plant to kill 14 people. And no one thinks he's plotting to blow up another one.
I do hope they charge and convict someone for the negligence there, but lets not pretend its the same thing as a bomber on the loose.
That said, I disagree with some of wha
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>one may have been an accident.
Or gross negligence.
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Or gross negligence.
I vote gross negligence. The West Fertilizer plant failed to notify the DHS of it' ammonium nitrate stockpiles. It is required to do under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act. They are not out of the woods by any means, someone is going to be held accountable.
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Or any sort of threat other than cash.
Re:Computer Trespass (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably so. Of course, the question this begs, at least in my mind, is not one of, "Why aren't these people in prison?", but rather, "Why does anyone go to prison over something so innocuous?"
Granted, you can definitely engage in forms of trespass that are much worse than this, but for something like this situation, which was promptly handled, had no major ill effects, and was responded to in a way that indicates it truly was a mistake, I don't see why anyone should be up for prison time, whether as an individual or a part of a company.
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Granted, you can definitely engage in forms of trespass that are much worse than this, but for something like this situation, which was promptly handled, had no major ill effects, and was responded to in a way that indicates it truly was a mistake, I don't see why anyone should be up for prison time, whether as an individual or a part of a company.
But they are ignoring the costs of the clean-up. Every single user that had their system compromised like that needs to check everything from scratch to verify that the sports league software didn't compromise their systems in any other ways.
The costs of that is probably in the millions. I mean major companies who already have staff on hand to handle that sort of thing as part of their regular duties routinely claim tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in clean-up costs, multiply that by all the o
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But they are ignoring the costs of the clean-up. Every single user that had their system compromised like that needs to check everything from scratch to verify that the sports league software didn't compromise their systems in any other ways.
I'm sorry, but no. You could apply the same logic to any other piece of software that was ever installed on any system ever. Unless you verified every line of code, how can you be sure that there wasn't some reused code from another project which had unwanted, but un
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Why does anyone go to prison over something so innocuous?
I broke into your car last night, but I didn't take anything. You wouldn't even know, if not for this message I'm leaving for you. Now, out of curiousity, does it feel innocuous to you to have your personal space violated? There was no harm done, right? Nothing was taken. You wouldn't even have known about it otherwise.
So, you have no reason to feel violated, correct? And I could do the same thing by coming into your house, correct? You know, where your computer is.........
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Your analogy would suggest that they broke into these computers. Quite the contrary. A better analogy might be that you invited me into your car (i.e. willingly downloaded the software), and I left behind a magnet that would pick up any loose change you dropped, but then I later thought better of it, let you know what I had done, and tried my best to make reparations.
Again, innocuous.
Re:Computer Trespass (Score:4, Informative)
Analogies are always wrong in the end, but wrong as it may be mine is still a lot better than yours.
Re:Computer Trespass (Score:4, Insightful)
Modifying your analogy a little:
You took your car to a repair shop. The repair shop used your car as a taxi for a day (using your gas and adding miles to your car).
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Was what they did wrong? Of course. But is it some crazy thing we all need to be getting uppity about?
Sure it is. They abused the user trust, installed unauthorized software inside his machine and received unauthorized information from that machine. They should go to jail because of it.
Nothing regarding EULA applies to this case, but if you want to talk about it, even if they had put it in an EULA it would still be a crime in many countries, maybe even in US where legislation by EULA is a common practice.
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Here's a better analogy:
They included some code in their software that intentionally performed unnecessary calculations.
Re:Computer Trespass (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably so. Of course, the question this begs, at least in my mind, is not one of, "Why aren't these people in prison?", but rather, "Why does anyone go to prison over something so innocuous?"
Granted, you can definitely engage in forms of trespass that are much worse than this, but for something like this situation, which was promptly handled, had no major ill effects, and was responded to in a way that indicates it truly was a mistake, I don't see why anyone should be up for prison time, whether as an individual or a part of a company.
Leaving it running for at least 2 weeks is not exactly promptly in my book. Even putting it in the release code disabled, without notification, is shady as hell. The forums are apparently riddled with complaints about gpu problems, including dead graphics cards on machines running the bitcoin software. While it's entirely possible it's pure co-incidence, it's also entirely possible they damaged thousands of dollars worth of high end graphics cards - which given they can easily cost $500 a pop, wouldn't take many. Consumer grade GPUs aren't designed to run full throttle for weeks at a time. Especially if, for example, a gamer has a manual fan control so they can shut up the half dozen case fans when idling, and ramp them up when they start a gaming session (I use this exact setup). A couple of generations back, I fitted after market copper heatsinks and fans to my GPUs to improve cooling at lower fan speeds, but the downside was they had to be manually controlled via a rheostat, so if something like this had been running without my knowledge it could easily have literally cooked my gpus without me being any the wiser as I ramped them down when to cut noise I was just browsing slashdot et al. Those cards are still trucking in a friend's machine several years later, incidentially.
Criminal damage in the course of trespass for profit? Seriously bad judgement, and really not funny. Worth jail time? No. Worth some real consequences? Yes.
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I'd certainly agree. I definitely believe that they deserve to be punished, but I also believe that the punishment should fit the crime, and jail time seems to be excessive for something such as this. Reparations to the victims and a fine would seem to make the most sense.
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If they used fraud or deception to install malware to take control of peoples machines to, say, send spam, that'd be solidly criminal.
Sending spam probably costs the owner of the compromised machine much less than bitmining does (in additional energy costs, cooling costs and possibly accelerated degradation of the GPU, possibly leading to failure). I'm not seeing how the same standards don't apply.
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Laws are prescriptive: they must be written and agreed upon beforehand. You cannot be punished for doing something which only becomes illegal after the fact.
Punishments for breaking laws generally provide for a range in sentencing, giving the judicial system some leeway in case the "crime" actually was something rather innocuous or unintentional. If you think the range of sentencing doesn't quite fit the magnitude of the crimes, then you believe the law should be changed. This also needs to be pre-scrib
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"You cannot be punished for something that only became illegal after the fact"
Tell that to the Australian government, who have done exactly that on more than one occasion.
http://www.ruleoflaw.org.au/campaigns/campaign-by-topic-area/retrospectivity/ [ruleoflaw.org.au]
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Granted, you can definitely engage in forms of trespass that are much worse than this, but for something like this situation, which was promptly handled, had no major ill effects, and was responded to in a way that indicates it truly was a mistake, I don't see why anyone should be up for prison time, whether as an individual or a part of a company.
They deserve to face prison time because Aaron Swartz, Andrew Auernheimer, Matthew Keys, Eric McCarty, Stefan Puffer, Bret McDanel all faced prison time for less
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As the saying goes, two wrongs don't make a right. Just because someone else faced an injustice does not mean that it should continue to be perpetrated on others, which is what you seem to be suggesting. If anything, it should point to a need to reform the system and come up with a new standard that will apply to everyone, rather than continuing to apply the unjust one.
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Agreed, but that doesn't mean that prison time is warranted. Note that I never suggested that they should go unpunished. A fine would seem to make much more sense, or mandatory compensation/reparations to the victims. Something that fits the crime, essentially, rather than defaulting to prison time for no apparent reason.
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I did not know there were mandatory sentences for this crime. Whether jail time is warranted is up to a jury but they should definitely be charged and tried.
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That's nice and all for the law, but as I pointed out with my first post in this thread, the question is not one of applying the law, but rather of why the law is what it is. I'd certainly agree that the law should be applied evenly both to corporations and individuals, but I'd also suggest that the law is providing an excessive punishment in cases such as these, and that it should be changed to something that better fits the nature of the crime. For instance, reparations to the victims and a fine, rather t
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This is one of those cases where hitting a score of 5 doesn't quite cut it. The double-standard here is pretty stark and depressing.
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This sounds an awful lot like computer trespass: coercing somebody else's computer into doing something on your behalf. If an individual pulled this stunt, he or she would be in prison.
Based on this section of ESEA's statement, it was an individual who pulled this stunt.
It came to our attention last night, however, that an employee who was involved in the test has been using the test code for his own personal gain since April 13, 2013. What transpired the past two weeks is a case of an employee acting on his own and without authorization to access our community through our company's resources.
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Kind of obvious, don't you think? It's not like he was a random guy on the internet that could just disappear when shit hits the fan. I'm sure if the guy values not getting in a lawsuit with his employer over these events, he would likely be more than willing to fork over the meager $4k he got from it.
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Pretty simple, he likely cut a deal with the employer to turn over all information regarded to the activity to avoid prosecution from the company itself.
As an example, years ago, I worked for a hardware reseller. The guy who processed our RMA's was using the company to supply his ebay business. Since he was the one handling replacements, when he went into the cage where the expensive stuff was held, no one gave it a second thought.
He got greedy and sold off 20 grand of inventory, which was enough to trip an
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Nope. It's fraudulent missuse of computer resources (Mine). and no, I didn't download their crapware but if I had and they got caught lying to me twice, I'd charge em with the federal crime of Fraudulent Missuse of Computer Resources along with suing their asses off for the same reason and No I wouldn't go for a class action status and if the lawyer was to suggest it, I'd kick em to the curb as they're not working for me, instead for themselves.
the clear takeaway (Score:2, Funny)
It's OK to add secret bit-mining code to client software as long as you do it on April 1.
How much? (Score:2)
So one bitcoin is worth roughly USD$127? I imagine those who started all this bitcoin stuff are probably filthy rich by now... right?
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If nobody's buying them or accepting them as currency, what is their value derived from?
I'll stick with my Canadian Tire dollars, thank you very much.
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All I keep reading is that it's costing more and more in processing time to mine a single bitcoin, so I'm assuming that the creators were able to mine a shitload of bitcoins with lesser resources at the very beginning.
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The big question is: How long did they hold onto that 'shitload' of bitcoins?
While mathematically clever, they were probably not also clairvoyant. Granted, with such low initial investment costs, they could afford to hold onto them for a longer time than people who invested at higher prices, but they would have had no way of knowing that $10/bitcoin wasn't the peak before the fall.
Re:How much? (Score:5, Informative)
Sure they are (making money). It's estimated that Satoshi Nakamoto (the anonymous inventor of BitCoin) got somewhere between one to one and a half million bitcoins in the early days, when they were very easy to generate (see the "total bitcoins" graph on wikipedia). Assuming he hasn't sold them off at some point in the past, they're currently worth somewhere between $120 million USD and $180 million USD. That's a pretty tidy profit for one person.
Re:How much? (Score:4, Interesting)
The spooky thing about that is: There is a limited amount of Bitcoins that will ever exist and new ones are getting more and more expensive to mine. This means that if Bitcoin ever will take off every single one of them would get more and more expensive. Bitcoin will top out at 21 million bitcoins. If you have one million bitcoins you will own about 5 percent of everything that can be bought with it. As in: If Bitcoin would become THE world currency at some point you would own 5 percent of the world. Of course even owning one bitcoin would make you stinking rich then.
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As long as a sufficient number of people didn't decide that they didn't want you owning 5% of the world and just said "Nope."
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It's a hell of a lot easier to switch from bitcoins than to switch from dollars.
Computer hacking... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, trying to pass it off as merely an April fools joke is insulting as well. The closest part to a joke was the Office Space grade conversation about skimming from their own customer base.
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The laws on the books aren't as clear as you think. "Hey, I didn't ask to mine BitCoins for someone else - what gives?!" is a logical user position, but I'm sure the license agreement that user agreed to upon installing basically gave them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted with his/her computer.
Which would hold up in court - and are you sure enough to foot the bill for representation until (and possibly even if) you prevail?
I'm not. I agree with you in spirit, but in this case their response was pret
Re:Computer hacking... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it sounds like a pretty awesome business plan if you are not underhanded about it. Release your software for free with a note in he TOS that you will be mining bitcoins for the developer whenever you are using the software. Users get "free" software and developers get incentive to make software that people want to use. If you release rubbish not many people will continue to use it and you won't get paid.
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until your software starts damaging your customers video cards by running them full bore 24/7
Re: Computer hacking... (Score:2)
That would be a good reason to not run your consumer's computer to death. It pays to play nice.
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I'm not advocating for open source even, merely that software developers bear a legal responsibility that their code perform the job for which it was installed or purchased and that those jobs be clearly delineated.
Inefficient is not the same either as long as the goals for which t
What does... (Score:2)
..."They've also provided data dumps of the Bitcoin addresses involved" mean?
I'm not up on bitcoin minutia. If these d-bags were running miners, that means that they own the coins... their wallet. So, what addresses do they mean? Specific coin IDs?
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..."They've also provided data dumps of the Bitcoin addresses involved" mean?
I'm not up on bitcoin minutia. If these d-bags were running miners, that means that they own the coins... their wallet. So, what addresses do they mean? Specific coin IDs?
Yes, they went to a wallet that the ESEA owned. In your wallet, you can setup numerous addresses that you can give to unique miners so you can see how many bitcoins specific miners are brining in. You can also just use a single address to have all of your bitcoins sent to. Either way, they'd all end up in the same wallet. As an example, here is the address I used when I first tried mining on a pool, you can use it to see how much I bothered to get from this specific pool.
1AiyVX1Ag87gar9E3oWb3QEziUHvDBRHax [blockchain.info]
Crime? (Score:2)
A joke? On who? (Score:2)
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Hint: They're lying.
EULA (Score:2)
This fiasco begs a question. (Score:3)
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I've never seen an instance of amortizing the cost of anything in which the total amount paid was less than paying for something outright. Cars, furniture, computers, phones, homes...
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act applies (Score:2)
This looks like criminal activity under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The "obtains anything of value" clause there seems to apply. When can we expect arrests?
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This looks like criminal activity under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The "obtains anything of value" clause there seems to apply. When can we expect arrests?
That would require the government asserting that bitcoins have actual value...
April Fools? Sure thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
It began as an April Fools' Day joke idea
How exactly does that work?
"We were using your electricity and potentially damaging your computer for a whole month without your permission! APRIL FOOLS! Ha we got you good!"
Website with TOS? (Score:2)
I wonder about a website which embedded javascript which mined bitcoins as long as you were active on the page. You could burry in the TOS that you were doing it to be on the up and up. Of course you'd want to throttle the JS so the user's fans didn't spin up and alert them, but still if you had a popular enough site, you might be able to make a pretty bit-penny...
Re:Website with TOS? (Score:4, Interesting)
...
279. By visiting this page you explicitly grant permission for our page scripts to run, regadless of the purpose, on your machine.
There. Any responsibility avoided. Furthermore, lately they are trying to push laws in the US that braking TOS is a federal offence, so blocking the "agreed-upon" scripts makes YOU a criminal!!
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Users vented their anger on the ESEA forums claiming that their video cards were maintaining over 90 celcius+ temperatures for extended period
Aside from not opening the source code for their client, the ESEA handled this situation well.
Your problems with your video card do not come from them. If you care about longevity and reliability, you need to stop overclocking your GPU and follow the manufacturer's instructions. By default, the hardware WILL shutdown if the virtual Tj reaches an unsafe level. If you disable that feature, don't cry when your card blows up. It could have easily happened while gaming.
(I am an electrical engineer. All our products are tested up to 85C ambient temperature, at maximum load. We only use driver ICs with built-in protection from overtemperature, overcurrent, and short-circuit.)
It's good that your product can handle up to 85C at maximum load. That's a good way to check that your product can survive 85C at maximum load. But I'm a systems engineer, and the fact that your product can survive doesn't do me much good when I'm concerned about the increased failure rate when a product is run at 100% for an extended period of time.
Gaming Video cards were NOT designed to operate at 100% utilization for extended periods of time. That sort of activity will result in shorter lifespans reg
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"Your problems with your video card do not come from them. If you care about longevity and reliability, you need to stop overclocking your GPU and follow the manufacturer's instructions."
Oh, yea? Is that why I sued EA for this exact same thing, forced them into settlement/bankruptcy?
Got some news for you...
If you're an EE, you're a pretty shitty one to not know that tons of GPUs use the world's shittiest urethane thermal transfer pads. Even without overclocking, they eventually lose that contact and begin t
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Not really.
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Yea, really. I sued EA for pretty much this exact same thing, except the hidden unmentioned software was SecuROM and it fucked with my GPU to where it would no longer recognize my 32" LCD as a 16:9 1080p monitor. A windows install didn't repair it, a re-flashing of the firmware fixed it, about a year after the lawsuit got settled.