Modern malware makes money by using this technique to mine Bitcoin, too. Even if you don’t care about most junkware at all, cryptocurrency-mining software is something you really don’t want on your computer.
Cryptocurrency 101:
You’ve probably heard of Bitcoin, the most famous cryptocurrency. It’s a digital currency, and new units of currency are generated by “mining”. This is a computationally intensive task, and it requires a lot of processing power. Essentially, the computer is rewarded for solving difficult math problems. This processing power is used to verify transactions, so all that number-crunching is required for the cryptocurrency to work.
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Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency. The Epic Scale junkware bundled with uTorrent’s installer doesn’t attempt to mine Bitcoin – it attempts to mine Litecoin, which was inspired by and is very similar to Bitcoin.
Mining Actually Costs You Money:
Mining programs tap into your computer’s hardware resources and put them to work mining Bitcoin, Litecoin, or another type of cryptocurrency. And no, even if your hardware is used to generate money for them, you don’t get any of it. They get all the money from putting your hardware to work.
Worse yet, your desktop computer or laptop at home just isn’t powerful enough to profitably mine Bitcoin, Litecoin, or other cryptocurrencies. Doing this profitably requires specialized mining rigs with specialized hardware and cheap electricity. So, even if you put your computer to work mining Bitcoin for your own profit, you’d actually lose money. You’d run up your power bill as your computer draws more power, and you’d make back less than it would cost you in power.