6 ms·

Ethereum miner with Terraform

32 points by hactually 9y ago

dEnigma 9y ago
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy Ether\Ethereum\Gas (whatever the correct name for the currency is)?
audio1001 9y ago
Is this profitable?
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  The readme shows roughly 4.5 Mh/s which might get you maybe $10/month if you're lucky. A g2.2xlarge will cost you $0.65/hour. So, no, it's not anywhere remotely close to profitable -- unless you've stolen some AWS credentials or (like what's apparently happening here) you get others to mine for you and eat the AWS costs.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- deadw0mb 9y ago
  No
- CaveTech 9y ago
  If it was I can promise you amazon would be out of gpu instances.
- koolba 9y ago
  Yes but likely only for the guy who has the private key hard coded in the config.
jlgaddis 9y ago
Or, in other words: "Just spin up this infrastructure -- which includes pre-generated SSH keys, an sshd that's apparently accessible from anywhere in the world, and a pre-compiled miner that you can't audit -- to mine some cryptocurrency -- for me -- at a huge loss". Yeah, I think I'll pass. ---- ETA: The readme says to pass in "wallet_address" but I don't see that referenced anywhere in main.tf, although I do see this: https://github.com/17twenty/ethereum-miner-terraform/blob/master/files/eth.service#L7 https://github.com/17twenty/ethereum-miner-terraform/blob/ma.... I've never used Terraform, though, so maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like you can pass a wallet address in, it just won't be used. If that's the case, I don't see how this is anything but a "scam". Someone who knows Terraform please look into this and tell me I'm wrong. One last thing: the readme says it uses the "Deep Learning AMI for Ubuntu 1604" [0], but the AMI ID in main.tf ("ami-37bb714d") doesn't match any of the IDs shown in the screenshot on that page (but perhaps they were updated or something?). I don't know if that's something to worry about or not but, at this point, there's no way I would trust this AT ALL. Also, "ami-cd0f5cb6" is referenced in a comment in main.tf but there's no indication what that refers to (I don't use EC2 so I'm not sure if it's possible to find out or not). [0]: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/07/aws-deep-learning-ami-for-ubuntu-now-available-with-cuda-8--ubuntu-16-and-latest-versions-of-deep-learning-frameworks/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/07/aws-deep-...
- rozenmd 9y ago
  When you pass in a variable into terraform it becomes an environment variable, presumably used by the precompiled code
  - juliosueiras 9y ago
    it will make more sense with something like data "template_file" "eth_service" { filename = "./files/eth.service" vars { wallet_address = "${var.wallet_address}" } } with ExecStart=/tmp/ethminer -G -F eth-us.dwarfpool.com:80/${wallet_address}
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    Ok. In this case, though, the included systemd unit launches "ethminer" with a hard-coded wallet address passed in.
- sairamkunala 9y ago
  Deep Learning AMI CUDA 8 Ubuntu Version - ami-37bb714d (us-east-1) was reading about terraform, OP is starting a daemon with that wallet address.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    > Deep Learning AMI CUDA 8 Ubuntu Version - ami-37bb714d (us-east-1) Thanks. I wouldn't have been surprised if OP had used the "official" AMI as a base and then "extended" it with some malware or something. Good to know it's (apparently?) the official Amazon AMI, at least.
- RobLach 9y ago
  How I'm understanding this is (as you also pointed out): The wallet address you pass in, as well as the default, is never read anywhere. It starts a service that joins a mining pool on the OP's behalf rewarding the hardcoded address: 0x7ea397225ebd5c56afc26cb3bfa4fe994a60f106 Etherscan shows that the address hasn't had any activity on it yet so it likely has never reached a pool minimum for payout: https://etherscan.io/address/0x7ea397225ebd5c56afc26cb3bfa4fe994a60f106 https://etherscan.io/address/0x7ea397225ebd5c56afc26cb3bfa4f... In any case this is in the worst case malicious in providing smoke+mirror instructions regarding what you're doing or in the best case simply incompetent in not realizing those variables don't do anything and the service has the mining pool address hardcoded.
sairamkunala 9y ago
Is it just me or the ssh private key present in the repo? (no way to know the server IP though)

32 points by hactually 9y ago

dEnigma 9y ago

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy Ether\Ethereum\Gas (whatever the correct name for the currency is)?

audio1001 9y ago

Is this profitable?

jlgaddis 9y ago
The readme shows roughly 4.5 Mh/s which might get you maybe $10/month if you're lucky. A g2.2xlarge will cost you $0.65/hour. So, no, it's not anywhere remotely close to profitable -- unless you've stolen some AWS credentials or (like what's apparently happening here) you get others to mine for you and eat the AWS costs.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
deadw0mb 9y ago
No
CaveTech 9y ago
If it was I can promise you amazon would be out of gpu instances.
koolba 9y ago
Yes but likely only for the guy who has the private key hard coded in the config.

jlgaddis 9y ago

Or, in other words: "Just spin up this infrastructure -- which includes pre-generated SSH keys, an sshd that's apparently accessible from anywhere in the world, and a pre-compiled miner that you can't audit -- to mine some cryptocurrency -- for me -- at a huge loss". Yeah, I think I'll pass. ---- ETA: The readme says to pass in "wallet_address" but I don't see that referenced anywhere in main.tf, although I do see this: https://github.com/17twenty/ethereum-miner-terraform/blob/master/files/eth.service#L7 https://github.com/17twenty/ethereum-miner-terraform/blob/ma.... I've never used Terraform, though, so maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like you can pass a wallet address in, it just won't be used. If that's the case, I don't see how this is anything but a "scam". Someone who knows Terraform please look into this and tell me I'm wrong. One last thing: the readme says it uses the "Deep Learning AMI for Ubuntu 1604" [0], but the AMI ID in main.tf ("ami-37bb714d") doesn't match any of the IDs shown in the screenshot on that page (but perhaps they were updated or something?). I don't know if that's something to worry about or not but, at this point, there's no way I would trust this AT ALL. Also, "ami-cd0f5cb6" is referenced in a comment in main.tf but there's no indication what that refers to (I don't use EC2 so I'm not sure if it's possible to find out or not). [0]: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/07/aws-deep-learning-ami-for-ubuntu-now-available-with-cuda-8--ubuntu-16-and-latest-versions-of-deep-learning-frameworks/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/07/aws-deep-...

rozenmd 9y ago
When you pass in a variable into terraform it becomes an environment variable, presumably used by the precompiled code
- juliosueiras 9y ago
  it will make more sense with something like data "template_file" "eth_service" { filename = "./files/eth.service" vars { wallet_address = "${var.wallet_address}" } } with ExecStart=/tmp/ethminer -G -F eth-us.dwarfpool.com:80/${wallet_address}
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  Ok. In this case, though, the included systemd unit launches "ethminer" with a hard-coded wallet address passed in.
sairamkunala 9y ago
Deep Learning AMI CUDA 8 Ubuntu Version - ami-37bb714d (us-east-1) was reading about terraform, OP is starting a daemon with that wallet address.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  > Deep Learning AMI CUDA 8 Ubuntu Version - ami-37bb714d (us-east-1) Thanks. I wouldn't have been surprised if OP had used the "official" AMI as a base and then "extended" it with some malware or something. Good to know it's (apparently?) the official Amazon AMI, at least.
RobLach 9y ago
How I'm understanding this is (as you also pointed out): The wallet address you pass in, as well as the default, is never read anywhere. It starts a service that joins a mining pool on the OP's behalf rewarding the hardcoded address: 0x7ea397225ebd5c56afc26cb3bfa4fe994a60f106 Etherscan shows that the address hasn't had any activity on it yet so it likely has never reached a pool minimum for payout: https://etherscan.io/address/0x7ea397225ebd5c56afc26cb3bfa4fe994a60f106 https://etherscan.io/address/0x7ea397225ebd5c56afc26cb3bfa4f... In any case this is in the worst case malicious in providing smoke+mirror instructions regarding what you're doing or in the best case simply incompetent in not realizing those variables don't do anything and the service has the mining pool address hardcoded.

sairamkunala 9y ago

Is it just me or the ssh private key present in the repo? (no way to know the server IP though)