Google Chrome May Add a Permission to Stop In-Browser Cryptocurrency Miners
From Bleepingcomputer
Google Chrome engineers are considering adding a special browser permission that will thwart the rising trend of in-browser cryptocurrency miners.Read more: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-chrome-may-add-a-permission-to-stop-in-browser-cryptocurrency-miners/Discussions on the topic of in-browser miners have been going on the Chromium project's bug tracker since mid-September when Coinhive, the first such service, launched.
A permission to block JS code that ramps up CPU usage
To Bleeping Computer's knowledge, there have been at least two complaints (bug reports) from concerned Chrome users that did not like having their resources hijacked by in-browser miners."Here's my current thinking," Ojan Vafai, a Chrome engineering working on the Chromium project, wrote in one of the recent bug reports.
If a site is using more than XX% CPU for more than YY seconds, then we put the page into "battery saver mode" where we aggressively throttle tasks and show a toast [notification popup] allowing the user to opt-out of battery saver mode. When a battery saver mode tab is backgrounded, we stop running tasks entirely.
I think we'll want measurement to figure out what values to use for XX and YY, but we can start with really egregious things like 100% and 60 seconds.
I'm effectively suggesting we add a permission here, but it would have unusual triggering conditions [...]. It only triggers when the page is doing a likely bad thing.
Discussions on this bug report are still ongoing, and Vafai's suggestion has not been formally approved, even if another engineer thought it a good idea.
If you have been reading my posts these last few weeks you would know I was predicting this exact thing. It's only a matter of time until these miners get stopped on a browser level.
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That was really a nice read. I can't say though if the decision will favor everybody.
Hmmm, I've just added coinhive's Monero miner to my website, see me at www.joenobel.com
There's a button half way down the home page on the right to support me even if you can't donate. This button is really still in prototype. I want to affix a good explanation as to what I'm trying to do.
I don't think anyone has clicked on it yet -- bad placement.
So far, I've been running it on 4 computers (of varying degrees of oldness and slowness) for about a week and a half now, and have earned the equivalent of about $0.32 in Monero.
Unless you've got thousands of viewers voluntarily opting in to run your miner for a few hours each day , your earnings will never add up.
Long way around to saying I don't think it'll be a big deal.
~Joe
@joe.nobel