Not so latent: news website to offer ads-free space in exchange for in-browser mining

The news portal called Salon has come up with a surprising way to counter advertisement blockers. As described by other news websites, Salon will provide their users a choice - either they turn off their plugins and addons that block ads voluntarily, or they “suppress” them with the help of the site owners. The catch here is that the latter option is provided in exchange for in-browser mining based on the Coinhive mechanism. The cryptocurrency called Monero will be the coin mined, as it does not demand as much energy as mining Bitcoin.

This is quite a peculiar application of Coinhive if one remembers the fact that this script is often used latently. Hackers inject websites with this tool or similar mechanisms to mine cryptocurrency with the visitors’ computers behind their backs, and even YouTube was once infected like this. Open offers to mine cryptocurrency for other people cannot be met that often on the Internet, although there was a charity program intended to help those who cannot afford bails and remain in custody wasting their time.

Potentially, open offers to mine cryptocurrency for companies in exchange for bonuses have a good future. There is, however, a security problem: hackers can simply change the wallet address and intercept the flow of money unless the security is tight.