On the weekend of August 23rd and 24th, visitors from two sites of Showtime contributed, unknowingly, to the minting of the Crypto Monero currency. A piece of Javascript code was integrated into the CBS group's websites before disappearing on the following Monday.
Some Internet users who walked on the site of Showtime during the weekend of 23 and 24 August 2017 have become, without their knowledge, minors. The site of the television channel, owned by CBS, contained indeed a Javascript code that exploited the activity of the spectators of the site to generate currency crypto.
As a reminder, "miners" is the name given to people who collect crypto money. By making additional blocks that are added to the already existing chain of blocks (that is, all the blocks that record transactions in a crypto currency), miners receive rewards for their work (the computing power available ).
Some Internet users who walked on the site of Showtime during the weekend of 23 and 24 August 2017 have become, without their knowledge, minors. The site of the television channel, owned by CBS, contained indeed a Javascript code that exploited the activity of the spectators of the site to generate currency crypto.
As a reminder, "miners" is the name given to people who collect crypto money. By making additional blocks that are added to the already existing chain of blocks (that is, all the blocks that record transactions in a crypto currency), miners receive rewards for their work (the computing power available ).
60% of processor activity
Over the weekend, the sites Showtime.com and ShowtimeAnytime.com have discreetly generated a code that has accelerated the activity of the site's visitors processors, in order to convert it into pieces of crypto currency Monero. These hidden add-ons were able to use up to 60% of the CPU capacity of the affected computers.
These scripts would come from Coinhive, which offers site owners to integrate a Javascript code so that every new visit of a user generates revenue in Monero - an alternative, in particular, to advertising. At present, a "coin" Monero represents a value of 80 €.
A SCRIPT PROVIDED BY COINHIVE
The CBS site, which opens its television programs on its site to its paying subscribers, seems to have been hacked by a mysterious user who integrated the script to the code of its web pages. This Javascript probably disappeared from the sites of Showtime in the Monday following the piracy.
The New Relic company involved?
The Register got a screenshot of the Showtime.com code as it was before the script was removed. The latter appears distinctly at the top of the page, and mentions the company New Relic, based in San Francisco and specializing in software publishing.
For now, Showtime refuses to comment on the subject. For its part, New Relic denies any relationship with this Javascript code. "After reviewing our products and code, the HTML comments posted in the screenshot and referring to New Relic were not injected by our agents," the company told our colleagues.
As for Coinhive, its privacy policy prevents it from giving any information about the owner of the account concerned. Nevertheless, the site confirmed that the address associated with this account was not an official address of CBS, but a personal address.
EMAIL ADDRESS RELATED TO COINHIVE ACCOUNT IS NOT MENTIONING CBS
In mid-2017, visitors to The Pirate Bay experienced a similar experience: their processor activity suddenly increased while they were on site. Again, a Javascript code for mining Monero, and provided by Coinhive, proved to be responsible for the phenomenon.