Google Chrome developers are considering ways to stop malicious in-browser crypto currency mining

As I’ve written about a few weeks ago, some websites are currently exploring in-browser crypto currency mining to make money off their users’ resources, without their knowledge or permission.

The problem is only going to get worse in the future, so it is good to see that the Google Chrome and Chromium (Open Source version of Chrome) teams are actively exploring methods to stop bad actors from abusing your computer’s resources like that to make money.

According to a bug report quoted on BleepingComputer, one of the methods to combat this that is being explored by the Chrome team is this:

Chrome would measure CPU usage of a site, see if it used X amount of CPU for Y amount of time (the values for that have yet to be determined), and if so then the site will automatically be throttled and a notification will be shown to the user telling them about the unusually high CPU usage of the site and if it should be allowed to use up resources, or if it should continue to be throttled. In the background, the malicious site’s scripts would even be stopped completely.

Another idea, to blacklist popular crypto currency mining scripts, was shot down because developers of such scripts could just change them to thwart any blacklisting effort so it would be an endless fight.

What do you think about this? Personally I think something like this has to be implemented sooner or later. I know some people like the idea of in-browser crypto currency mining instead of ads, and I’m okay with that idea, but not if it’s done without the user’s express permission. At that point it becomes malware and absolutely deplorable behavior.