Google Chrome blocks cryptocurrency mining ads in the background
Chrome has announced that it blocks users' CPU resources, bandwidth, and ads that consume electricity. Ads using 4 megabytes of network data or 15 seconds of CPU usage in a 30-second period will be blocked.
Tuğçe İçözü
May 18, 2020
Google Chrome blocks cryptocurrency mining ads in the background
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Google Chrome announced that it will block ads that consume devices' resources from now on. Chrome has released the ability to block users' CPU resources, bandwidth, and electricity-consuming ads.
It has appeared in the past years that many sites have been mining bitcoins and cryptocurrencies over many ads, especially YouTube. By closing the Javascript deficit on the YouTube platform in 2018, it prevented such ads from taking place on the platform. Apparently; Google is strengthening the steps it takes against this issue with this feature it adds to Chrome.
Diego Betto
@diegobetto
Hey @avast_antivirus seems that you are blocking crypto miners (#coinhive) in @YouTube #ads
Thank you:) https://diegobetto.com/crypto-miner-coinhive-youtube-ads/…
Crypto Miner (Coinhive) in YouTube Ads | Diego Betto
During normal browsing on YouTube, at some point, the antivirus Avast reported something that was not good. From the Chrome Inspector it appears that one of the ads…
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For those who do not know how to make cryptocurrency mining over ads, let's transfer it. As it displays content on sites or advertisements, the code embedded in the ad calculates heavily using resources. After these calculations, it transfers the currency it creates to a wallet determined by the developer.
It should be noted that the code is often severely hidden in order to hide this fraud from users. The only sign that something is wrong at this point is fast rotating propellers, discharged batteries and increased consumption of network resources.
Chrome Project Manager Marshall Vale said in his blog post that the ads that exploit users are 0.3 percent. Although the prevalence of ads is low, the resources they use are quite high. According to the information given by Vale; these malicious ads; Compared to other ads, it has 28% CPU usage and 27% network connection usage.
Marshall Vale said the following in his statement on the subject:
"We recently discovered that a certain percentage of ads consume device resources disproportionately, such as battery and network data. These ads (those that are cryptocurrency mining, poorly programmed, or not optimized for network use) can shorten battery life, saturate already stretched networks, and can cost money. "
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Chrome limits the resources that display ads can consume to solve this problem. If the ad reaches its resource consumption limit; advertising space; redirects users to an error page. This page explains to users that the ad consumes a lot of resources. Blocked ads cannot be displayed in any way.
Under this new feature, ads using more than 99.9 percent of CPU or network data will be blocked. In this context; Note that ads that use 4 megabytes of network data or 15 seconds of CPU in a 30-second period will be blocked. Likewise, in 60 seconds of total CPU usage; It is useful to add that it will be removed in ads that consume CPU consumption of 15 seconds.
