[Bud]

Why does Skype even have any clickable links in it at all if Microsoft can't be bothered to keep the obvious malware out?

[anigbrowl]

Don't miss the forest for the trees. If it wasn't skype, it'd be some other channel. The point here is that mining malware is a rather new and troubling phenomenon.

[neurotech1]

And of limited real value. A CPU only miner would yield about 10 MHash/s or less on standard hardware, and a malware/junkware loaded PC will do even less.

[mischanix]

I recently came across a very naive-looking sample of a pooled GPU-miner being distributed via a purported crack for a certain EA game.

It's ridiculously easy to implement GPU mining if you have any remote execution on a machine.

[bluepanda_]

Isn't the total hash rate the sum of the hash rates of all infected machines (i.e: 10MH/s * 2000 infected machines = 20GH/s)?

[nwh]

Far less than that. My shiny quad core i7 gets 4MH, and I doubt most consumer desktop computers would manage that. You're probably looking at 0.5-2 at a maximum.

[eurleif]

There will always be ways to monetize malware. I'd rather they monetize it by mining Bitcoins than by doing something more destructive.

[taf2]

honeypot anyone... create the appears of a hacked machine that is successfully mining... keep'em busy for a few weeks ...

[wahnfrieden]

It's surely automated, in which case, there's nothing to "keep busy" like a human manually hacking into the average lousy computer one by one.