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μTorrent (often referred to as uTorrent or MTorrent by people too lazy to look up how to type in a "μ" character) is reportedly silently shipping a bitcoin miner with its default install. While you can opt out during the installation process, the mining software, called "EpicScale", is apparently installed automatically and silently when updating an existing μTorrent install.
It seems that the developers are aware of this, but the only official response that was given by an administrator on the forum is that " it's easy to uninstall the software via Add/Remove Programs".
From the experience of several users, the installation process still leaves .dll's and executables behind once completed.
More detail can be found on this thread on the official forums.
Are any SoylentNews user affected by this? What alternative torrent clients do you use?
[Editor's Note: The official forums are down at time of editing. The topic has also been discussed on Reddit which includes an Imgur link with the forum thread.]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday March 08 2015, @07:31AM
Sounds like I need to update a notch. Any bad habits in 3.3 that I should beware of?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by TLA on Sunday March 08 2015, @09:07AM
we're on 3.4.2 now, everything seems to be behaving. I've not had any issues with unwanted BHOs or Litecoin miners or any of that junk, but there again I'm paranoid to begin with (helps having a background in MI and later CI), knowing what vectors are available to snoopers is a good start to mitigating them.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 2) by TLA on Sunday March 08 2015, @09:09AM
ooh, one thing to note though, turn off automatic updating in the client under advanced options. That apparently is where if you leave it as is, the coin miner installs silently on the next update...
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday March 08 2015, @02:04PM
Yeah, turn off auto-updates is the first thing I do with *all* software!! Hieing from the era of chronic "driver update broke everything" as I do, I'm a fanatic proponent of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
But I'm gonna be trying Deluge. Interface looks decent in screenshots and it doesn't have all this, uh, negativity going on.
I did try qTorrent (and a couple others I forget which) but found it kinda irritating. uTorrent sure as hell got the GUI right, plus it still doesn't eat much, and that's what's kept me using it for so long.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.