back to article Yes, there is now Bitcoin-mining malware for Android

Bitcoin mining on low-powered devices these days is a bad idea, to say the least. As cryptocurrency blockchains grow more complex, even high-powered dedicated mining rigs are having trouble effectively mining coins. Your smartphone, therefore, is going to be about as useful for mining Bitcoin as soup ladle is for mining actual …

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  1. Tromos

    BadLepricon?

    Are we looking for a dyslexic Irish person here?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you don't have to pay for the handset, nor for the power they consume, it's all going to be very effective. Given enough phones you will make plenty of bitcoins.

    1. d3rrial

      No Martijn, you won't. It's unlikely that the smartphones have enough power to ever even submit a share, let alone find a block. You are severely mistaken if you think even millions of smartphones mining for one person would make even close to a bitcoin within one year.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        They don't have to find a block. Submitting shares will make sure they get something from the pool. Do this with enough phones and you'll still make something worthwhile.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Given enough phones you will make plenty of bitcoins.

      You really won't, they just don't have the muscle to contribute anything effective.

      You must have missed the part of the report where it says the software scales back processor usage to try and hide, so every infected handset is only going to be running at 50% anyway.

      You would actually need at least a million strong botnet to see anything.

      Thats even before you consider that bitcoins are getting worth less and less as time go's on, they've lost about 60% in six months - hardly a good indicator for the future.

  3. jake Silver badge

    Strangely enough ...

    ... when I was teaching my youngest brother's kids the concept of panning gold when camping out along the San Joaquin River, I used the ladle from the pot of chili that we were cleaning to demonstrate. We managed to find six small flakes of gold ...

    That's solid wealth (for small quantities of wealth).

    Bitcoin? Not so much. I'll use virtual currency when I see value in virtual beer.

    1. d3rrial

      Re: Strangely enough ...

      Then tell me, I'm interested, what currency isn't virtual?

      1. jake Silver badge

        @ d3rrial (was:Re: Strangely enough ...)

        Strangely enough, six little flakes of gold.

        Nowt virtual about metal in my change purse.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

          Re: @ d3rrial (was:Strangely enough ...)

          I'll use virtual currency when I see value in virtual beer.

          The dollar is 100% virtual, yet you can get beer.

        2. Zot

          Re: @ d3rrial (was:Strangely enough ...)

          Quick! Sell it to China, they'll looove your gold, they can't get enough of it.

        3. d3rrial

          Re: @ d3rrial (was:Strangely enough ...)

          Six little flakes of gold are still only six little flakes of metal. The value of which is defined by what exactly? Well, seeing as you found these flakes with your brothers children (iirc) these flakes have a high sentimental value to you, but would anyone else care about them? Would someone give you beer for these little flakes of metal?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    This is why i like

    Windows phone. None of this shit on that platform.......

    NB. Please save the "Cos only 23 people use it" jokes, they are tired...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: This is why i like

      its because the processor in windows phone is too "dirty" so not even malware will run on it.

    2. John Tserkezis

      Re: This is why i like

      "Windows phone. None of this shit on that platform......."

      All 23 Windows Phone users, have enough combined computing power to calculate you're wasting your time. And their time for that matter.

      1. John Tserkezis

        Re: This is why i like

        "All 23 Windows Phone users,"

        Whoops, it appears I have made an error.

        Going on the downvotes, there are only TWO windows phone users.

  5. oddie

    "...the malware spreads from a series of applications that have since been removed from the Google Play store."

    ".....users can help avoid infections on the smartphones by disabling "unknown source" installations in their smartphone settings and only installing apps from trusted vendors and stores."

    -The Google play store is now both an unknown source and an untrusted vendor? who knew!

  6. BamboozledByButtons

    So, lets do the math...

    According to the hashing rates here :

    https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#ARM

    We could expect 1.3MH/s from a dual core A9 based phone like the Samsung SII. With a Samsung SIII that could probably go up to ~4MH/s (quad core, faster clock speed) and an S5 probably 8-10MH/s tops (Snapdragon 801 running at 2.5Ghz should at least double over an A9 at 1.9Ghz). All of this is contingent on optimising the program carefully for different CPU architectures (A9, Krait etc) and would require the CPU to stay awake and run at it's maximum frequency / voltage the entire time.

    Using figures from here:

    http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/

    Assuming that you infected 1000 Samsung Galaxy S5's at 10MH/s or so you'd get 10,000MH/s which if you could somehow keep all the phones going for 24 hours in a row non stop (in practice they'd die in a few hours due to battery drain) would net you a whopping 0.33USD for that time period at current rates... in future that will go down.

    So, 10/10 for inventive use of malware.... 0/10 for use of basic arithmetic!

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: So, lets do the math...

      Yeah. Anyone using an ARM handset for mining BTC is on some pretty strong mind-altering drugs.

      C.

    2. Zot

      Re: So, lets do the math...

      I thought they use the GPU and did parallel processing?

      1. Zot

        Re: So, lets do the math...

        LOL at down voting a question, and not answering. Never mind, looking into it now. Very interesting.

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