Another in-browser mining virus spotted on Showtime website

Not so long ago, the visitors of The Pirate Bay, a torrent platform where, among other content, one can download movies and new TV show episodes (absolutely illegally, consider yourself warned), have spotted a strange innovative script that works only when a page from the site is opened, getting the resources of the visitor’s computer to mine cryptocurrency for the script developer.

Now another website connected with cinema has been found infected with the similar virus, mining Monero again. CBS’s Showtime official websites, Showtime.com and ShowtimeAnytime.com, were found capturing more computer resources than a regular website needs, which turned out to be another infection. The Register even provides proof screenshots of the script code the tech-savvy users have managed to find.

While Showtime declined to comment on the matter, another company responsible for the website structure, New Relic, told it takes all security threats seriously and this code segment was not in any way added by them.

Recently, AdBlock Plus browser plugin developers came up with a way to counter at least some of scripts like these. See the article for more details.