Norton 360 antivirus now lets you mine Ethereum cryptocurrency

The_King

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Aug 2, 2020
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NortonLifelock has added the ability to mine Ethereum cryptocurrency directly within its Norton 360 antivirus program as a way to "protect" users from malicious mining software.

This new mining feature is called 'Norton Crypto' and will be rolling out tomorrow to Norton 360 users enrolled in Norton's early adopter program.

When Norton Crypto is enabled, the software will use the device's graphics card (GPU) to mine for Ethereum, which will then be transferred into a Norton wallet hosted in the cloud.
 

MacDefender

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Oct 13, 2019
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Joking aside, this line of reasoning "_____ is dangerous because of untrusted apps, so please let your antivirus company provide this service for you" is really scary to me. I want the job of antimalware to focus on detecting and protecting from malware, not bundling a million services. That just seems like they're trying to find a way to convince people to buy AV software subscriptions.
 

Vitali Ortzi

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Dec 12, 2016
1,147
Joking aside, this line of reasoning "_____ is dangerous because of untrusted apps, so please let your antivirus company provide this service for you" is really scary to me. I want the job of antimalware to focus on detecting and protecting from malware, not bundling a million services. That just seems like they're trying to find a way to convince people to buy AV software subscriptions.
Mitm all your traffic using resources to mine how is an av different from malware lol
 
L

Local Host

Norton includes miner malware now :coffee:
Joking aside, this line of reasoning "_____ is dangerous because of untrusted apps, so please let your antivirus company provide this service for you" is really scary to me. I want the job of antimalware to focus on detecting and protecting from malware, not bundling a million services. That just seems like they're trying to find a way to convince people to buy AV software subscriptions.
That has been a problem in the industry for a few years now, they should focus on more basic anti-malware protection, rather than bundling all sorts of useless bloatware.

Is one of the reasons I like F-Secure Anti-Virus (don't confuse with F-Secure SAFE).
 

CyberDevil

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Apr 4, 2021
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That has been a problem in the industry for a few years now, they should focus on more basic anti-malware protection, rather than bundling all sorts of useless bloatware.
I don't quite agree. I think that the main trend of recent years is the rise of Microsoft Defender, which is available to all users of the current Windows by default, as well as a general reduction in the number of active threats that can threaten a cautious (experienced) user. Therefore, I know dozens and dozens of people who do not understand why they need to pay for an antivirus.

In my opinion, development additional services is correct, but it should be consistent, reasonable and of high quality. The most important direction is the creation of tools to increase privacy on the Internet, since information security a priori includes the concept of protecting personal data from uncontrolled leaks. However, most of the products provide additional services and not enough quality and for inadequate money. For example, Avast Anti-track is expensive and almost useless against the background of many free solutions, I believe that this functionality should have been included in Avast Premium by default.

Nevertheless, Avira in my opinion is a living hell of a huge set of useless additional modules and this is an example of how you do not need to develop additional services within the framework of an antivirus product. :)
 

peterfat11

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Mar 25, 2021
515
Norton includes miner malware now :coffee:

That has been a problem in the industry for a few years now, they should focus on more basic anti-malware protection, rather than bundling all sorts of useless bloatware.

Is one of the reasons I like F-Secure Anti-Virus (don't confuse with F-Secure SAFE).
yea, some thing small like a web extension is ok, but I don't want to mine cryptocurrency
 

Nightwalker

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May 26, 2014
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As the difficulty of mining Ethereum by yourself is very high, Norton users will likely be pooled together for greater chances of mining a block. If Norton is operating a pool for this new feature, they may take a small fee of all mined Ethereum as is common among pool operators, making this new feature a revenue generator for the company.

What a bad joke, I am without words.
 

bjm_

Level 14
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May 17, 2015
667
“As the crypto economy continues to become a more important part of our customers’ lives, we want to empower them to mine cryptocurrency with Norton, a brand they trust,” said Vincent Pilette, CEO of NortonLifeLock. “Norton Crypto is yet another innovative example of how we are expanding our Cyber Safety platform to protect our customers’ ever-evolving digital lives.”

“We are proud to be the first consumer Cyber Safety company to offer coinminers the ability to safely and easily turn the idle time on their PCs into an opportunity to earn digital currency,” said Gagan Singh, chief product officer at NortonLifeLock. “With Norton Crypto, our customers can mine for cryptocurrency with just a few clicks, avoiding many barriers to entry in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.”
https://investor.nortonlifelock.com/About/Investors/press-releases/press-release-details/2021/NortonLifeLock-Unveils-Norton-Crypto/default.aspx
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https://community.norton.com/en/forums/introducing-norton-crypto-feature-eap-channel-targeting-build-2221541-3rd-june-2021
 
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