Last month The Pirate Bay caused some uproar by adding a Javascript-based cryptocurrency miner to its website.
The miner utilizes CPU power from visitors to generate Monero coins for the site, providing an extra source of revenue.
The Pirate Bay only tested the option briefly, but that was enough to inspire many others to follow suit. Now, a few weeks later, Pirate Bay has also turned on the miners again.
The miner is not directly embedded in the site’s core code but runs through an ad script. Many ad blockers and anti-malware tools are stopping these request, but people who don’t use any will see a clear spike in CPU usage when they access the site.
The Pirate Bay team previously said that they were testing the miner to see if it can replace ads. While there is some real revenue potential, for now, it’s running in addition to the regular banners. It’s unclear whether the current mining period is another test or if it will run permanently from now on.
The miner does appear to be throttled to a certain degree, so most users might not even notice that it’s running.
Running a cryptocurrency miner such as the Coin-Hive script TPB is currently using is not without risk. Aside from user complaints, there is an issue that may make it harder for the site to operate in the future.
Last week we reported that CDN provider Cloudflare had suspended the account of torrent proxy site ProxyBunker, flagging its coin miner as malware. This means that The Pirate Bay now risks losing the Cloudflare service, which they rely on for DDoS protection, among other things.
Cloudflare’s suspension of ProxyBunker occurred even though the site provided users with an option to disable the miner. This functionality was implemented by Coinhive after the script was misused by some sites, which ran it without alerting their users.
The Pirate Bay currently has no opt-out option, nor has it informed users about the latest mining efforts. This could lead to another problem since Coinhive said it would crack down on customers who failed to keep users in the loop.
“We will verify this opt-in on our servers and will implement it in a way that it can not be circumvented. We will pledge to keep the opt-in intact at all times, without exceptions,” the Coinhive team previously noted.
The Pirate Bay team has not commented on the issue thus far. In theory, it’s possible that a rogue advertiser is responsible for the latest mining efforts. If that’s the case it will be disabled soon enough.
