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Norton is installing a Cryptocurrency miner called Norton Crypto (NCrypt.exe)
- rvz 5y agoThis is not satire. Norton actually thinks it is a good idea for anti-virus software to have a cryptocurrency miner installed too. whilst also taking a 15% mining fee off of the work! This is beyond a scam at this point. Is that why closed-source anti-virus software is a scam as well since they can install any sort of malware when they want to or allow it to run without doing anything? The anti-virus is the virus.
- PenguinCoder 5y agoIf this isn't insider hack, then someone high up in management signed off on it being a good idea. Utterly mind blowing. Guess they need to make money somehow.
- voakbasda 5y agoSeems like a good plan for an insider to short the stock before releasing this “feature” onto the unwashed masses.
- marcosdumay 5y agoNorton has been an "computer maintenance tools" package for ages. At the late 90's, people used to choose it because of the disk defrag, not the antivirus.
- quirkot 5y agoMy cousin's laptop from 2015 with 50 chrome tabs open will definitely earn more ETH than it costs for electricity </sarcasm>
- cool_dude85 5y agoNorton gets the coin and your cousin pays the electric bill. From their end it's all upside.
- pc86 5y agoNo, they don't. At the risk of violating the site guidelines, I suggest you actually read the article instead of responding to what you assume it says.
- vorpalhex 5y agoNorton is taking a 15% "fee". https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announcements/introducing-norton-crypto https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announ...
- skeeter2020 5y agoThey charge you for the product on subscription and then take a cut of the total mined currency (I beleive 15%). If that isn't all upside not sure what is. I'd suggest you follow the site guidelines as well and comment to add value.
- pc86 5y ago"Norton gets the coin" absolutely suggests that this is nefarious mining where Norton gets 100% of the value. That's demonstrably false, and just because Norton is a horrible company with horrible products doesn't mean we need to pretend it's something it isn't.
- willio58 5y agoIt's comical at this point, anyone working for Norton here? Would love to know the thoughts of someone internal.
- pc86 5y agoWho in their right mind would admit working for Norton at this point?
- CoastalCoder 5y agoThese people: https://www.linkedin.com/company/norton-antivirus-security/people/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/norton-antivirus-security/p...
- wickedsickeune 5y agoThe company is called NortonLifeLock Inc, this link is most likely for an indian tech scam company.
- cnbeining 5y agoIt's a Crypto Wallet. Source: am NLOK employee.
- howinator 5y agoNo it's not. Source: https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announcements/introducing-norton-crypto https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announ...
- Stevvo 5y agoI'd imagine a machine infected with Norton isn't even a good environment to mine crypto; it's already wasting it's resources on the rest of the bloat in that product.
- pjerem 5y agoAt least they now have a really good incentive to really remove viruses !
- adamrezich 5y agowow, I just bought my fiancée a gaming laptop and it came preinstalled with Norton—I didn't uninstall it right away because I predicted it would be a pain, but now I'm going to do that first thing after work today. people like my dad still go out of their way to install Norton on every computer they get their hands on—just a few years ago I built my mom a cheap simple desktop to dump her photos onto, and one day she told me it was really slow all of the sudden, so I checked it out and lo and behold my dad had installed Norton on it and it had made everything molasses-slow. kind of sad to see this once-respected software suite stooping to these levels.
- dustymcp 5y agoi dont know anyone that ever respected Norton, i think its time to have the 'talk' with dad.
- anthonyskipper 5y agoBack in the MS-Dos days Norton was the only game in town for a bunch of things... Disk defragmenting, tools for working with file system, etc. It was a swiss army knife of good tools. But your point is generally correct in that for the last 20 years it has been atrociously bad.
- PopAlongKid 5y ago>Back in the MS-Dos days Norton was the only game in town for a bunch of things In the mid-1980s, PC Tools[0] was a worthy competitor to Norton. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Tools_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Tools_(software)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- adamrezich 5y agoI should've said that my dad still manually runs dfrg.msc weekly and has a shortcut to it on his desktop lol
- ronsor 5y agoAt that point you may as well skip the antivirus and go straight to a shady Russian download site. The result will be the same, but at least you won't be paying for the miner.
- brnt 5y agoThe Pirate Bay will be the last place where you can still get clean software.
- kjaftaedi 5y agoGotta wonder what Peter Norton thinks about still having his name on this.
- hericium 5y agoI'd love to see a "How to uninstall Norton Antivirus" video by Peter Norton.
- bithavoc 5y agoIn case someone is out of context, parent is referring to John McAfee’s video on how to uninstall the infamous antivirus while doing Bath Salts[0]. Intel then proceeded to rename the product to distance themselves from the “McAfee” name[1] [0]https://youtu.be/h92Jy94UxTg https://youtu.be/h92Jy94UxTg [1] https://money.cnn.com/2014/01/07/technology/security/intel-mcafee/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2014/01/07/technology/security/intel-m...
- iso1631 5y agoMcAfee, where both the product and the founder are awful
- kingcharles 5y ago> [0]https://youtu.be/h92Jy94UxTg https://youtu.be/h92Jy94UxTg I've been on the Net for 27 years and this one of the best videos I've ever seen. RIP John McAfee. You were a legend.
- tpmx 5y agoWow, he's 78 years old now.
- benjamir 5y agoHe's dead, Jim!
- 5y ago
- salawat 5y agoThis, right here, is blatant theft, and unauthorized utilization of consumer resources. I don't care if there is a clause in there about "You consent to blahblahblah."
- badRNG 5y agoI think there's a misunderstanding because the original thread leaves one thinking that Norton is surreptitiously installing cryptominer malware on their customer's machines (not a big fan of how that was communicated.) In reality, this is an optional cryptomining application that you can choose to run (if you are willing to let Norton keep a 15% cut.) https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announcements/introducing-norton-crypto https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announ...
- robbedpeter 5y agoNobody competent with computers is going to be using Norton. It'll show up on gram and gramps home pcs, and they'll have been running it for a year before they proudly mention: "I've been mining NortonCoin to save money on my anti-virus subscription!" Or whatever bullshit Norton sales gremlins have fed them. Their demographic is people who don't know better, and this whole thing reeks of illegal consumer exploitation.
- wlesieutre 5y agoA lot of people's grandparents are going to earn $10 of "free money" with this utility and have no idea that it cost them $200 of electricity. Meanwhile Norton's laughing all the way to the bank with their 15% off the top. (disclaimer: numbers totally made up, but I'm sure the average Norton user's computer isn't mining profitably)
- badRNG 5y agoImportant note, because it isn't immediately obvious: Norton is bundling an optional cryptocurrency miner that they are offering as a product. Nothing here indicates that Norton is surreptitiously adding cryptominer malware on their customers' machines (like one might assume reading the original thread.) Though they are taking a 15% cut for using their miner...[1] [1] https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announcements/introducing-norton-crypto https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announ...
- cbhl 5y agoHuh, I guess after they saw how many of their customers had crypto miners detected on their systems they decided to get in on the game.
- skeeter2020 5y agois this the same way MS adds "optional" telemetry and other features, LinkedIn "optionally" adds me as a follower to everyone in my network and every website "optionally" adds me to receive all sales & marketing emails? If it's bundled it's not really optional, is it?
- fourseventy 5y agoIts optional because you don't have to turn it on... not rocket science
- short12 5y agoNorton has outright been a malware company for a long time I'd love to see the feds arrest a few people there and destroy the company. Just remember. Don't ever hire someone with recent Norton experience I their resume. I'd sooner fill that gap in with the explanation that I was selling fentanyl laced products on the dark web
- wizzwizz4 5y agoI don't know – there are acceptable (if rare) reasons to work on Norton, but I can't think of any reason that selling fentanyl-laced products would be okay.
- notyourwork 5y agoAnecdotal, a few years back I had the opportunity to interview an engineer. Their background was in web advertising. Regardless of what I feel about ads on the internet, the candidates technical background with respect to how they handle iframes inside of iframes many levels deep and how they inject code into the page was actually quite a fascinating conversation on the technical merit of it all.
- anormalpapier 5y ago> Don't ever hire someone with recent Norton experience I their resume. This is pretty ridiculous. I worked there and and there is much more going on internally than writing malware-like software. By the time I left they still had pretty decent engineers just trying to find a job in a better company, like me. These sort of decisions don't come from Software Engineers and management there is known to be pretty shitty. Also, it's not like they maliciously inserted this thing to mine crypto for Norton itself. Whatever your computer mines is yours (still a bad idea though IMO) https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announcements/introducing-norton-crypto https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announ...
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago> it's not like they maliciously inserted this thing to mine crypto for Norton itself. Whatever your computer mines is yours It says you're joined to a mining pool. Is this a Norton 360-only mining pool? If so, I'm guessing they have their own hardware participating in the pool as well. And if that's the case, you're helping them mine for blocks just as much as you're helping yourself. But they don't say that anywhere so who knows. edit: and it also appears that they're taking 15% of whatever you mine. So they've apparently: * Set up a Norton-only pool * Joined all their customers computers to it * Collect 360 subscription fees to participate * Collect 15% of everything their customers mine * Participate in the pool themselves, further benefiting from their customers mining activity And what happens to the unclaimed/unused wallets that they're holding for their oblivious customers in "the cloud"? If I cared enough about this to read the fine print I bet I'll find that they're reserving the right to empty those after a certain period of inactivity.
- aspenmayer 5y ago(July 2021) https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announcements/introducing-norton-crypto https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announ...
- SilasX 5y agoWTF. If not for the domain (and month) I'd assume that was some April Fool's joke.
- tpmx 5y agoReview: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/cryptocurrency/hands-on-with-norton-antivirus-ethereum-mining-the-good-and-the-bad/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/cryptocurrency/hands-o... + It's opt-in + It's easy to use - 36 hours of running it did not result in a "single penny" (see review for details, may have changed now) - Uses 100% of the GPU capacity when the GPU is ~idle, with no way of adjusting the mining rate - 15% mining fee
- iso1631 5y agoDoes it tell you how much extra electricity you're using?
- tpmx 5y agoHow could it know? Edit: It would actually be nice if the PSU (and all of the various subsystems, like the GPU) were required to measure the power usage and report it to the OS. I'm sure one of those ATX pins could be repurposed to include signalling, somehow.
- duskwuff 5y agoMost GPUs have power sensors that can be read from software. Even if they don't, they could make an estimate based on the model of the GPU.
- Hamuko 5y ago
- b0sk 5y agoThe idle cycles on your CPU in 2000s : aid search for extra terrestrials 2010s : help search for cancer cures 2020s : help planet incinerating ponzi grifters (h/t: jwz)
- HPsquared 5y agoExtraterrestrials: no money Cancer research: some money Crypto: more money
- kingcharles 5y agoI don't know why you didn't make any money from the SETI search. It worked out nice for me once I'd established contact; I'm now get 20 DogeCoin for every anal probe they administer.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago20 Dogecoin is only a little over $3. You're getting scammed.
- tclancy 5y agoDon’t yuck someone else’s yum.
- addandsubtract 5y agoYou're only getting scammed if you convert it to fiat. 1 Doge = 1 Doge, always.
- notreallyserio 5y agoI read it as every anal probe they administer to anyone. That's probably a pretty sweet deal.
- hiptobecubic 5y agoNot if you'd do it for free ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
- cnbeining 5y agoIt's a legit product from Norton - a Crypto *Wallet*. Source: am NLOK employee.
- tzekid 5y agoA wallet and mining client that uses 100% of your GPU if "idle". But of course mining it's opt-in, and that's good because everybody reads all the text on a prompt before they mindlessly click "Confirm".
- emerged 5y agoI wouldn’t use the word “legit” within 50 miles of this.
- duskwuff 5y agoA "crypto wallet" with a 15% withdrawal fee???
- eredengrin 5y agoI mean it sounds like a better deal than a payment processor with a 30% fee... (yes I'm poking at apple for anyone who might be wondering)
- skeeter2020 5y agoPotential Upside: maybe they'll need to redesign their antivirus to leave some resources available for mining coins?
- dan-robertson 5y agoCoins on the GPU, antivirus on everything else
- costcofries 5y agoThis is so absurdly disgusting, there's nothing more to it. The whole thing boggles my mind but the FAQ is just on another level, here's one example: Q: Will I be able to adjust the settings thresholds, or will Norton decide that? A: For now, Norton will manage the settings. We are continuing to build capabilities and could potentially make the settings adjustable for you in the future. Like, I know ~1.5m people still pay for AOL [1] but this is criminal. [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/aol-1point5-million-people-still-pay-for-service-but-not-for-dial-up-internet.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/aol-1point5-million-people-s...
- prirun 5y agoMy neighbor still pays for AOL, and has an aol.com email address. I've tried to get her off of it, but she stays because I quit working on her Windows computer a few years ago (got rid of all mine, yay!), and for $5-10/mo, she has a person to call who will walk her through problems with her computer. Not just AOL problems, like with their browser (which she also still uses), but with any problems.
- bszupnick 5y agothat's not a bad deal...
- grishka 5y agoAt this point I'm convinced that the entire antivirus industry is a scam scheme for the most part. They make everyone suffer for their own profit. Users are scared into installing this crap and paying recurring payments for it, and then the performance of their computer goes to shit. Developers are given nightmares by having their software misdetected as a virus or broken by the antivirus changing the OS behavior in unexpected ways.
- Terry_Roll 5y agoIts certainly a legal way to spy on many users and businesses to extract secrets thats for sure!
- blacksmith_tb 5y agoIt could be used for that obviously, though do we have any evidence? Who would the AV vendors sell the secrets to, and how? (I guess it's not a surprise I wouldn't be in those meetings, but you'd think there be a whistleblower somewhere?)
- buran77 5y agoThe feature that automatically submits samples for further analysis has been known to catch proprietary executable code, send it to the AV manufacturer's sandbox where it was promptly executed and leaked data from inside that infrastructure (MS), or give away some complex hacking campaign before the attackers have the chance to use the tools (Kaspersky).
- bigodbiel 5y agoThere was that Kaspersky incident. TL;DR Kaspersky inadvertently acquired confidential NSA hacking tools from an NSA employee home computer with their AV product installed in it.
- simonh 5y agoSo Kaspersky flagged the hacking tools as a virus and sent it to Kaspersky for investigation? Nice!
- taylanu 5y agoOn top of it all they had the audacity to set the mining pool fee to 15% with no option for alternative pools. (for ref mining pool fees are generally 1-3%)
- sour-taste 5y agoI'm pretty ignorant about this stuff but when proof of stake comes around won't there be no need for this mining pool at all? I thought under proof of stake you're just validating transactions instead of actually finding a hash, which doesn't require a big pool of workers. Seems weird for them to focus on ETH rather than BTC or something else.
- dudus 5y agoIt seems proof of stake has been delayed ad infinitum for ETH, to the point people seem to be losing confidence it's ever coming out. Plus there's some real concern about it. Even if eth changes to proof of stake there will be plenty of coins to mine with proof of work.
- cronix 5y agoNot to defend this practice at all, but when I was looking into crypto mining a fair bit ago, the bar to entry was quite large even for someone in the tech space. There didn't seem to be a simple app you just download and start. You have to know a lot of stuff. I don't know why more companies haven't come out and made crypto mining easier for the masses who just use apps but don't make them. It seems like low hanging fruit. There could be something available now...I haven't really researched as I'm not really passionate about this space and seemed more trouble than it was worth to get started with the time I was willing to put in. I just thought it was odd that there wasn't something with a simple interface you could just hit "mine" with maybe a couple of radio button options and away you go. I'm sure we will see a lot more larger/mainstream companies dipping their toes in, maybe even at the OS level to capitalize on it. There is a market for it and I'm guessing it's quite large, probably larger than the current crypto market which is kind of niche, just likely not many potential customers in the HN type crowd.
- SpliffnCola 5y agoNiceHash is what you're looking for.
- hi5eyes 5y agonicehash is fairly easy, even using regular miners like trex, gminer take almost no effort
- jermaustin1 5y agoThere have come along "apps" that make it easier, but their cost is high. Usually in the exchange rates they offer you to cash out of it. Kryptex.org comes to mind. The other month when BTC was at $60+k they were offering an exchange rate of low $50k. Basically a ~17% discount on the rate. That is a big fee, especially when you then ask to be cashed out to some other method they then charge 10-20% for (like USD bank transfers, etc). Best bet is to install something like T-Rex miner, hook it to some pool and forget about it once you learn the 1 line bat file you need.
- pavlov 5y agoMining on PCs makes no financial sense if it's your own hardware. If you're stealing someone else's CPU cycles and you have a large enough base of PCs, it can be profitable.
- mediocregopher 5y agoEven from a pro-crypto standpoint this offering is somewhat problematic: > Once earned, they can track their earnings in their Norton Crypto Wallet, which is stored in the cloud so it cannot be lost due to hard drive failure. From https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announcements/introducing-norton-crypto https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announ... So your "earnings", meager as they likely will be, aren't even properly given to you. Not to mention it seems unlikely that a consumer-grade machine is going to earn enough from its share of mining to cover the energy costs. At this point you have to have some kind of extra-cheap energy source to be able to compete in mining. Although some people (e.g. me) have a flat-rate electricity bill with their apartment, so maybe some could take some advantage.
- kingcharles 5y agoCan you transfer out the Ethereum in Ethereum? A lot of these hosted crypto wallets only let you convert it back to local currency. You can't spend it or trade it outside the corp that is holding it.
- wcoenen 5y agoFrom Norton's post: > What platforms can I transfer the crypto to? > Norton Crypto supports transfers of Ethereum from your digital wallet to Coinbase.
- tombert 5y agoI haven't run Windows in any serious capacity in about 11 years now, but even in 2010 or so, it was pretty rare that I ever got viruses on my computer (even with all the trips to torrent websites to download TOTALLY LEGAL STUFF). I've been running Linux or Mac since then, and due to their lower userbase there tends to be fewer viruses (as far as I understand it), but I would have to assume that Windows has gotten more secure and less virusey than it was 11 years ago? I don't think anyone I know even uses antivirus anymore. Maybe I'm mistaken. All that said, I've thought Norton Antivirus was a bloated piece of shit piece of software even when computer viruses were a problem for me. I guess them installing a crypto miner is just further proof of that.
- squarefoot 5y ago"Norton is installing a Cryptocurrency miner" sounds like when 10-15 years back it made the news when one app or one OS installed adware or spyware. We did nothing, and now it is becoming the norm. If that's the trend, then, ladies and gentlemen, we're screwed: every piece of software will attempt to monetize from user's hardware, no matter the cost, particularly when cost is on the users. Name one reason why they shouldn't do that, there's no law forbidding it except common sense. Cryptocurrency is cancer. It doesn't scale, it can't scale, it's becoming a huge unsustainable environmental disgrace, and it's the #1 reason why certain hardware is harder to find and overpriced, followed by energy, of which we have plenty but decided to waste it in mining farms. Here are some numbers, just look at the trend: from 77 TWh to 204 TWh in one single year. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ https://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-mining-electricity-usage-more-than-google-2021-9?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-mining-electricity-u... Now just picture what will be like 5 years from now with possibly one PWh of miners worldwide pumping heat in the atmosphere 24/7, and energy prices skyrocketing because it will always be allocated to this task, therefore demand will always be higher than offer. Seriously, WTF! Of course I expect downvotes from users with vested interest in cryptocurrencies, however I politely ask others to reply with "You're wrong because ..." followed by a believable explanation. I want to be proven wrong on this.
- rytill 5y agoIsn't that just a criticism of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies?
- kikimora 5y agoThis cryptocurrency rant is offtopic. Would it make a difference if Norton would install something that shows ads? As to your question - crypto is the new form of cash, different form every other forms we have known before. One exciting property is the relative independence from any particular economical or political system. Blockchain in general has potential to replace all middleman from lots of transactions. Think of property, fundraising, stocks, trade (especially overseas), etc. Specific implementations can be regulated by government(s), the point is to replace bookkeepers with machines.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- elwell 5y ago"The key to the wallet is encrypted and stored securely in the cloud. Only you have access to the wallet." https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announcements/introducing-norton-crypto https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announ...
- imwillofficial 5y agoI’m ashamed to have ever worked for Symantec. This is beyond ridiculous. Absolute abuse of trust.
- nullc 5y agoGonna die from irony. For years Norton and other AV vendors have been harassing Bitcoin users by falsely identifying their intentionally installed Bitcoin node software as a malicious cryptocurrency miner (and, no, it doesn't do that). Now they're installing their own miner.
- lostmsu 5y agoI wonder if they could be sued for anti-competitive behavior and/or service disruption.
- low_tech_love 5y agoI wonder what some universities and companies who still rely on Norton licenses across the board will have to say about this at the end of the month when their electricity bill comes.
- onphonenow 5y agoNo removal option for this "feature". It's funny how anti-virus stuff looks like virus stuff. You can however "pause" the mining forever while keeping everything installed which is what support will suggest if you ask.
- perennate 5y ago> You can however "pause" the mining forever while keeping everything installed which is what support will suggest if you ask. Just to clarify because this sentence sounds a bit misleading -- according to https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/v138388461 https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/v... the cryptocurrency miner is off by default, so if you haven't turned it on, then there's no need to pause it if you don't want it running.
- handoflixue 5y agoDo you actually have any knowledge of the product, or are you just quoting a support page? I wouldn't trust a support page's definition of "opt-in"
- perennate 5y ago> I wouldn't trust a support page's definition of "opt-in" The support page doesn't have any definition of "opt-in". It simply says that users need to click under "Turn your PC's idle time to cash" and then accept a "License and Services Agreement" before they can access the "Norton Crypto dashboard" and enable "mining during idle time". I would consider that opt-in given that the user has to perform multiple steps before they can even enable the miner, and given that there isn't any suggestion to enable this by default during the installation process. If you don't consider that "opt-in", then please explain. There seems to be a mob here that has been misled to think that the cryptocurrency miner is enabled by default and runs on every Norton user's computer in the background, whereas in reality it IS installed by default (as in the binary takes up storage space on the user's hard drive), but can only be enabled with multiple steps including agreeing to a separate services agreement that is dedicated to the Norton Crypto product. (I still think it's dumb to bundle a crypto miner with an anti-virus product. But all this talk about it running without the user's consent is nonsense.)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- itronitron 5y agoAnyone know how to delete a .exe file from Windows 'as Administrator' when you are using an Administrator account?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- champagnois 5y agoFirewalls and offline networks are a better line of defense than antivirus tools. If a virus is on your system it is already too late for the tool to do anything.
- tomxor 5y agoOMG this is a legitimate thing: > https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announcements/introducing-norton-crypto https://community.norton.com/en/blogs/product-service-announ... As if AV software doesn't slow down PCs enough as it is, they thought adding a crypto-miner would be a good idea to finish the job and turn them into fully rated space-heaters.
- Nikbul 5y agoHuh, Norton is still alive and selling? Wow, I was done with it in early WinXP times after I had to format drive because uninstalling Norton Security permanently crashed OS. To below the bottom we go!
- owenversteeg 5y agoI'm surprised there isn't any math in this thread on how much they stand to make with this, so I'll try with a bit of napkin math. NortonLifeLock reported 21M customers in 2021, with 60% using Norton 360 (presumably the rest are using their identity theft products?) so let's call that 12.6 million computers (ignoring multi-computer licenses for simplicity.) You're not going to mine any Ethereum on a CPU, so let's assume we only care about GPUs. Let's say that 20% of users have a PC with a GPU suitable for mining any ETH at all, and within that 20% they have an average of 6GB graphics cards. The internet claims that a 6GB graphics card will average around 26 MH/s for Ethereum, which would have earned $38 in the last month of mining. Assuming Norton gets 25% of users to activate this (which seems high to me) we have around (25% of users activated)*($38 worth of ETH mined/month per gaming PC)*(20% of all PCs are gaming PCs)*(15% Norton pool fees)*(12.6M installed Norton copies) = 0.25*38*0.2*0.15*12.6 = $3.6 million per month, or $43.2 million in profit per year. If they enabled this for everyone I imagine they could easily get into the hundreds of millions of dollars of pure profit per year range. However, mining on a mid-range graphics card typically isn't profitable once you factor in electricity and the decreased lifespan of the graphics card. So while this is making huge profits for Norton, it's likely costing the users money if they enable it. At $0.10/kWh and 15% pool fees, you're negative on the majority of gaming PCs, and deeply negative on every single non-gaming PC. Pretty scummy move.
- itronitron 5y agoIt's also worth mentioning that while the ETH is in 'their cloud' Norton is going to consider all of that ETH as theirs. So the total ETH based on your numbers would be 0.25*38*0.2*12.6 = $23.94 million per month or $287 million per year in accumulated ETH assets.
- kseifried 5y agoNorton AntiVirus now includes an Ethereum crypto miner that has several problems including deceptive rewards program and difficulty in uninstalling it. Norton keeps 15% of all Ethereum mining proceeds and "pays" the remainder into a users "Norton Crypto Wallet" which is hosted by Norton. It should be noted that the Norton Crypto Wallet cannot be used to make Ethereum transactions, but can only be used to transfer value to a Coinbase account once a certain minimum threshold of value is accrued. The Norton crypto mining and Norton Crypto Wallet are effectively a gift card system where the money can be withdrawn, but not unless a certain balance is available. It should also be noted that the Norton Crypto mining software is reportedly very difficult to uninstall, requiring administrative level privileges, and even then reports indicate effective removal is difficult.
- throway453sde 5y agoSince antivirus companies existence depends on the malware, has there been any documented case where the antivirus company is the creator of malware.
- kseifried 5y agoIt's just a classic gift card balance exploit. From GSD-2022-1000002 (https://github.com/cloudsecurityalliance/gsd-database/blob/main/2022/1000xxx/GSD-2022-1000002.json https://github.com/cloudsecurityalliance/gsd-database/blob/m...) Norton AntiVirus now includes an Ethereum crypto miner that has several problems including deceptive rewards program and difficulty in uninstalling it. Norton keeps 15% of all Ethereum mining proceeds and "pays" the remainder into a users "Norton Crypto Wallet" which is hosted by Norton. It should be noted that the Norton Crypto Wallet cannot be used to make Ethereum transactions, but can only be used to transfer value to a Coinbase account once a certain minimum threshold of value is accrued. The Norton crypto mining and Norton Crypto Wallet are effectively a gift card system where the money can be withdrawn, but not unless a certain balance is available. It should also be noted that the Norton Crypto mining software is reportedly very difficult to uninstall, requiring administrative level privileges, and even then reports indicate effective removal is difficult.
- Mehmetvarta 5y ago