[Discuss] Any miners?

[Shankar Viswanathan]

On 06/16/2017 07:02 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
> computers most botnet victims have. On the flip side, if you happen to 
> own such a botnet then you'd make more money renting it out or by 
> pushing out ransomware and hoping victims pay up than you ever could 
> by mining.

This isn't always the case. I can't find the citation right now, but 
based on some reports I read, the recent WannaCry ransomware campaign 
only resulted in about $150,000 worth of BTC paid into those wallets (at 
the time of publication of that article). The variant that used the same 
exploits to install bitcoin miners have apparently yielded much more 
than that, particularly given the recent run up in the value of BTC.I 
reckon it is still making them money because several machines might 
still have it running with the users unaware of its presence (with 
ransomware it is obvious that you are infected).

-Shankar