Karlston Posted October 5, 2017 Share Posted October 5, 2017 Web-based cryptocurrency miners became a big thing recently when The Pirate Bay trialed one to generate extra revenue. Now, however, TorrentFreak has learned that Cloudflare has banned at least one torrent proxy site for deploying a miner on its platform. According to Cloudflare, unannounced miners are considered malware. After years of accepting donations via Bitcoin, last month various ‘pirate’ sites began to generate digital currency revenues in a brand new way. It all began with The Pirate Bay, which quietly added a Javascript cryptocurrency miner to its main site, something that first manifested itself as a large spike in CPU utilization on the machines of visitors. The stealth addition to the platform, which its operators later described as a test, was extremely controversial. While many thought of the miner as a cool and innovative way to generate revenue in a secure fashion, a vocal majority expressed a preference for permission being requested first, in case they didn’t want to participate in the program. Over the past couple of weeks, several other sites have added similar miners, some which ask permission to run and others that do not. While the former probably aren’t considered problematic, the latter are now being viewed as a serious problem by an unexpected player in the ecosystem. TorrentFreak has learned that popular CDN service Cloudflare, which is often criticized for not being harsh enough on ‘pirate’ sites, is actively suspending the accounts of sites that deploy cryptocurrency miners on their platforms. “Cloudflare kicked us from their service for using a Coinhive miner,” the operator of ProxyBunker.online informed TF this morning. ProxyBunker is a site that that links to several other domains that offer unofficial proxy services for the likes of The Pirate Bay, RARBG, KickassTorrents, Torrentz2, and dozens of other sites. It first tested a miner for four days starting September 23. Official implementation began October 1 but was ended last evening, abruptly. “Late last night, all our domains got deleted off Cloudflare without warning so I emailed Cloudflare to ask what was going on,” the operator explained. Bye bye As the email above shows, Cloudflare cited only a “possible” terms of service violation. Further clarification was needed to get to the root of the problem. So, just a few minutes later, the site operator contacted Cloudflare, acknowledging the suspension but pointing out that the notification email was somewhat vague and didn’t give a reason for the violation. A follow-up email from Cloudflare certainly put some meat on the bones. “Multiple domains in your account were injecting Coinhive mining code without notifying users and without any option to disabling [sic] the mining,” wrote Justin Paine, Head of Trust & Safety at Cloudflare. “We consider this to be malware, and as such the account was suspended, and all domains removed from Cloudflare.” Cloudflare: Unannounced miners are malware ProxyBunker’s operator wrote back to Cloudflare explaining that the Coinhive miner had been running on his domains but that his main domain had a way of disabling mining, as per new code made available from Coinhive. “We were running the miner on our proxybunker.online domain using Coinhive’s new Javacode Simple Miner UI that lets the user stop the miner at anytime and set the CPU speed it mines at,” he told TF. Nevertheless, some element of the configuration appears to have fallen short of Cloudflare’s standards. So, shortly after Cloudflare’s explanation, the site operator asked if he could be reinstated if he completely removed the miner from his site. The response was a ‘yes’ but with a stern caveat attached. “We will remove the account suspension, however do note you’ll need to re-sign up the domains as they were removed as a result of the account suspension. Please note — if we discover similar activity again the domains and account will be permanently blocked,” Cloudflare’s Justin warned. ProxyBunker’s operator says that while he sees the value in cryptocurrency miners, he can understand why people might be opposed to them too. That being said, he would appreciate it if services like Cloudflare published clear guidelines on what is and is not acceptable. “We do understand that most users will not like the miner using up a bit of their CPU but we do see the full potential as a new revenue stream,” he explains. “I think third-party services need to post clear information that they’re not allowed on their services, if that’s the case.” At time of publication, Cloudflare had not responded to TorrentFreak’s requests for comment. Source: Cloudflare Bans Sites For Using Cryptocurrency Miners (TorrentFreak) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted October 5, 2017 Share Posted October 5, 2017 The problem with Cloudflare there like ProtonMail and they think there the law and can ban who they want and turn in who they want and not ban who they want . And that don't go over so good in the USA were there based and hiding 1000s of piracy sites they are in trouble in the courts for it. ‘Daily Stormer’ Termination Haunts Cloudflare in Online Piracy Case https://torrentfreak.com/daily-stormer-termination-haunts-cloudflare-in-online-piracy-case-170929/ I cant stand Bitcoin mining but i cant stand big tech firms like Cloudflare and others trying enforce the law on the www it's high time sites switch too another non USA CDN because in the end the USA government will most likely make Cloudflare ban sites anyway. Piracy sites are living on borrowed time using there services . FYI: They are still sites like alluc.ee that are using Coin-Hive So is this just another case of them laying the law down as they see fit and not banning others ? Tell they ban all sites using Bitcoin miners it is! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
namek Posted October 7, 2017 Share Posted October 7, 2017 Love this move! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted October 7, 2017 Share Posted October 7, 2017 1 hour ago, namek said: Love this move! What is there too love? Another day and still lots of sites with bitcoin miners still using clouldflare do you think blocking 1 site is really going too make a difference? Do you think they would ban the ones who pay a fee, i doubt it ! Always they go after sites who expect too get something for nothing, but nothing is really free , so they must be getting something out of sites that use it for free. Also there are many sites that don't use clouldflare at all using them as well . I surf the internet enough too know the truth of the matter . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted October 7, 2017 Share Posted October 7, 2017 only one site i seen so far that i cant get around it https://www.2giga.link/ they not using clouldflare but you cant get the download from them with adblockers on so i don't use there site. So if you use it in a way i cant block you i will just get my stuff somewhere else this site no longer working in JDownloader ether . you can disable all blockers it and use it real fast and get you're link and get out of doge if there is no other mirrors lol . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
straycat19 Posted October 7, 2017 Share Posted October 7, 2017 9 minutes ago, steven36 said: only one site i seen so far that i cant get around it https://www.2giga.link/ they not using clouldflare but you cant get the download from them with adblockers on so i don't use there site. On a site you really want to access but still block their ads you can use your firewall to block the ad IPs. I have a VM setup for just that use, no adblockers, just a firewall with a whole slew of IPs blocked. Once in a while it will let an ad through but only because they are using an IP I hadn't blocked yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted October 7, 2017 Share Posted October 7, 2017 Just now, straycat19 said: On a site you really want to access but still block their ads you can use your firewall to block the ad IPs. I have a VM setup for just that use, no adblockers, just a firewall with a whole slew of IPs blocked. Once in a while it will let an ad through but only because they are using an IP I hadn't blocked yet. it want work i already tried it it has too show the Coin-hive catchapa before it will let you download Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recruit Posted October 7, 2017 Share Posted October 7, 2017 6 minutes ago, straycat19 said: On a site you really want to access but still block their ads you can use your firewall to block the ad IPs. I blocked everything starting with 0.0.0.0 until 255.255.255.255. I have none any ad ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted October 7, 2017 Share Posted October 7, 2017 Blocking ips work for sites that don't have captcha like like alluc.ee but it will break sites that has the captcha and make them unusable so that is going to extremes . I get no download link blocking ips. ws004.coinhive.com , ws005.coinhive.com etc gives you the needed captcha too unblock the download blocking ips can't solve a captcha it just blocks the captcha. It's a ingenious idea remove google captcha for free downloads and get paid by using coinhive instead. More info: New captcha where you mine monero for few seconds instead of selecting images http://supforums.com/thread/62418708/technology/new-captcha-where-you-mine-monero-for-few-seconds.html Quote 1000 captchas cost $1 to be solved at 2captcha. reCAPTCHA is nothing but feeding Google AI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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