The story started from yesterday, when users of the popular application uTorrent with various posts in company forum began to report that EpicScale, a Bitcoin miner, had been installed on their systems without their permission after upgrading the uTorrent 3.4.2 Build 38913 application.
According to the publications, users during the installation were very concerned about what third-party services were accepted and which did not. But everyone says there was no disclosure about installing EpicScale, which turns their computer into a Bitcoin miner. Of course there are too many unhappy users who say they never expected it from the company.
This was later refuted by uTorrent staff who stated that third-party software can not be installed without user approval.
“We have reviewed the issue and I can confirm that there is no silent installation. Indeed, it is impossible for third-party software to be installed without the user's permission. We are continuing to look into the matter. But it is almost certain that those users reporting the problem accepted the offer during installation. "
iGuRu.gr performed a test installation that showed that while there were several third-party app offerings, EpicScale was not one of them. We during the installation of the new client δεν το συναντήσαμε, και όταν αναζητήσαμε το EpicScale.exe στο Task Manager του υπολογιστή, δεν υπήρχε.
What makes installation of EpicScale very worrying is that it uses computer resources on the computer to extract Bitcoin, which of course is not yours.
The users of Windows who have installed that particular version of it uTorrent they should immediately check Task Manager to make sure EpicScale is not running on their system. If you see the application running, uninstall uTorrent and install either an earlier version, or a new torrent client.
Even if these claims are not true, uTorrent should revise its third-party application policy that includes the installer of the application. Following these news, we are likely to see a shift of application users to other clients.
I use the portable version and I have no problem
Mining with CPUs is like trying to extract gold with toothpicks. Maybe they meant GPU mining of another cryptocurrency
Right, but imagine how many torrent clients will be operating globally
A week ago I tried this torrent and the next day… bottom right in the system alerts I saw a red "e"…. I looked it up and finally saw that it was epicScale and in the registry keys it says utorrent.