Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency

only a brewing threat til it becomes a force. innovator's dilemma.

But you have orders of magnitude more of them. Slaved mobile devices are orders of magnitude cheaper, too!

> The severity of financial impact on the victim is irrelevant.

Not if it actually damage some parts of the phone like the battery because you have to charge it more often.

A theft? Do you consider all installed apps to be stealing then?

I Just use the factory apps and have nothing else installed, this way no one mines anything out of me.

"Personal Computers" have had viruses and malware for decades. They are most assuredly not full of "all wonderful things".

"Users are dumb, they won't notice, and hey, the app's free anyway."

Maybe we've stumbled on a great alternative to the freemium model?

I did that on some university servers around 1999. We had a few Alphas dedicated to batch processing, and I set up S@H to run on them.

One catch was that the duration of batch jobs was limited to 12 hours, so I couldn't just fire and forget. I ended up scripting it so that when the job ended, it automatically resubmitted itself to the batch queue.

It took about a day before I got a surprisingly friendly e-mail from the sysadmin asking me to please stop.

Taking that further, I would much rather be used as a fractional miner than provide unhindered, across the board access to personal transportable data and per device usage from the device.

Providing a user with means to throttle or govern the mining seems appropriate even if not explicit. If I am trying to use my device put the virtual mining crew on break and dont check back for at least 20 minutes.

Secondly, exclusive mining rights. Only one app per device, but each developer can ask for a share of the haul. Having more mining apps competing for time will work in no ones favor. As the device owner I should inherently be entitled to a significant share.

An auditible mining client would be valuable. I could certainly see this as something that could eventually fit neatly somewhere between an optional and encouraged part of an AOSP deployment.

The idea of sharing computation cycles certainly did, however, converting those computation cycles into currency so it can fuel other "real" work is most definitely a by-product of bitcoin.

Folding@Home, and the BOINC network over at Berkeley have done a great job at this already. http://boinc.berkeley.edu

There's still an immense opportunity to tap unused cycles if you give people another reason to donate their device time. Unfortunately, altruistic purposes don't always appeal to the masses :-)

The basic crux of how the app works is similar to how regular bitcoin miners work. As you run the app, the app runs compute jobs (known as Stynts) which generates proof-of-work (that it did something) and sends it up to our servers. The more you run the app, the more proof-of-work you generate. You get rewarded via virtual currency (we assign to you) when you successfully run a Stynt which can then be exchanged for real goods.

Of course, the amount you get compensated should feel valuable and commensurate to the "effort" your device expended for this to be worthwhile. It largely boils down to user expectations, but given economics of scale, I'm confident that we can have more than a 1:1 ROI of effort to reward.

The app actually monitors the battery temperature (exposed on all Android phones) and throttles down when it exceeds a certain threshold.

The charging circuitry on some phones (not all) actually disengages the battery from the charging circuit path once 100% AC power is reached. In other words your phone's CPU runs off of AC power (and not via the battery) once 100% charge is reached.

Why you would sign up is where it gets interesting - the app works via a similar incentivization scheme as how bitcoin miners work - the more you run the app (mine) the likelier you stumble upon a valid proof of work, and you get rewarded by virtual currency.

Let's say 5W for 8 hours per day, that's 14 kWh per year.

Last year I paid 17.51 eurocents per kWh, so it would be EUR 2.45 per year for me ($3.37 per year).

That's putting a value of zero on being fined (or worse). I don't think the risk is non-zero. Just takes one zealous AG to file a case against you (even if you're out of jurisdiction, there's a non-zero chance you might end up passing through at some point).

Not sure if this is what you're referring to, but this was done last year in secret by ESEA, a US gaming league (primarily Counter-Strike) [1].

They claim the value was almost USD$4,000 over about two weeks, although we don't really know how many users were affected and for how long. This doesn't seem like an extraordinary amount, though, especially if we're talking about using mobile phones instead of high-end gaming PCs.

[1] http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/05/01/esea-accidentally-release-...

This is the thing that worries me the most about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies--because I want them to succeed--there are myriad laws surrounding money transfers, especially electronically. There are tax implications, as well. There are also huge trade agreements internationally--and even intranationally--that come into play, as well. Banks and credit card companies currently handle most of the legality of these things, but with cryptocurrencies, there are no banks--these are essentially cash transactions.

I expect more and more folks will start to "discover" the real legal implications of some of these types of applications. I'm sure we'll see some story or what have you, and we'll all cry foul, even though the laws have been in place for many years and we mostly (albeit somewhat unknowingly) abide by them.

I also expect that folks will "discover" why we have central banks for currencies, and why Alexander Hamilton was a Smart Guy.

While cryptocurrencies are new, the problems they'll face aren't--in fact, we've solved these problems mostly in developed countries. They still exist pretty readily in developing countries, though. What happens when we start selling securities based around cryptocurrencies, such as derivatives? If you think the SEC will allow Americans to buy, sell, and even discuss securities openly, you are out of your mind.

What about money laundering? When/if you ever work for a bank or an investment firm in the US, you'll take some training around money laundering (there are even tests at the end). The SEC (allegedly) holds these firms responsible for spotting, reporting, and stopping money laundering schemes. What happens when money laundering happens over an exchange? How will that be handled?

Sorry for the long-windedness...your anecdote just got me thinking.

Certainly some jurisdiction might decide this isn't "fair" and attempt prosecution? May be worth a headline somplace near election time.