It’s Showtime…Who’s Mining Cryptocurrency

Usually when you think about a TV channel like Showtime, you rarely think about cryptocurrency, bitcoin, ethereum, or anything like that, right? Well, start thinking a little differently because this article is about to reveal some secrets for you.

Within the last week, Showtime websites were identified as having been running a type of script that lets the sites mine visitors’ extra CPU power for digital currency.  Users on twitter figured this out first.  The sites included showtimeanytime.com and showtime.com but the script has been removed since then…according to a few 3rd party sites.

Essentially the script is built using java and is called Coinhive. It was built as an alternate to banner ads as an option for website owners to get around ad blockers. But come to find out, some ad blockers now include Coinhive on the list of banned banners.

Monero is the cryptocurrency that the script mines.  Monero was started in early 2014 and is made to be a more anonymous type of cryptocurrency even more so than bitcoin based on the fact that you can buy it offline with actual cash.  Thirty percent of the proceeds end up going to Coinhive, while sites that use the service like Showtime and The Pirate Bay keep the balance.

Coinhive ended up increasing awareness about its operations through a recent statement, “We’re a bit saddened to see that some of our customers integrate Coinhive into their pages without disclosing to their users what’s going on, let alone asking for their permission.”

The service said that it will ask people who are browsing the site if they give permission before mining their CPU. But whereas The Pirate Bay made a formal apology for secretly running the script, Showtime ended up declining to comment thus far