SafeUM
Home Blog Services Download Help About Recharge

Axarhöfði 14, 110 Reykjavik, Iceland

Iceland - 2015
SafeUM
Blog
Services
Download
Help
About
Recharge
Menu
Archive
TOP Security!
13 Dec 2017

Starbucks Wi-Fi hijacked people's laptops to mine cryptocurrency

When Stensul CEO Noah Dinkin visited a Starbucks in Buenos Aires recently, he probably didn’t expect to be served some sneaky cryptocurrency miner code along with his coffee.

But thanks to the store’s internet provider, that’s exactly what he got. “Hi Starbucks, did you know that your in-store wifi provider in Buenos Aires forces a 10 second delay when you first connect to the wifi so it can mine bitcoin using a customer's laptop?”

Dinkin tweeted on December 2. “Feels a little off-brand.” Dinkin wrote that Bitcoin was the digital currency being mined, but CoinHive, the company that provided the code for the miner, only works with Monero, a competing coin. Surreptitious cryptocurrency mining has become a bit of a phenomenon of late. The value of digital currencies is skyrocketing across the board, so companies and websites are getting in on the gold rush by injecting a user’s browser with code that hijacks their processing power to generate digital tokens. This process, known as “mining,” is resource-intensive and can significantly impact performance.

On December 11, Starbucks responded to Dinkin’s tweet, acknowledging the issue and announcing that it’s been resolved. Visitors to the Buenos Aires location where Dinkin noticed the mining code will no longer have their computers sneakily hijacked, it would seem.

“As soon as we were alerted of the situation in this specific store last week, we took swift action to ensure our internet provider resolved the issue and made the changes needed in order to ensure our customers could use Wi-Fi in our store safely,” the official Starbucks account tweeted to Dinkin. Starbucks spokesperson Reggie Borges told that the incident was isolated to the Beunos Aires location and the problem was with the service provider, not Starbucks itself.

"Last week, we were alerted to the issue and we reached out to our internet service provider—the Wi-Fi is not run by Starbucks, it's not something we own or control," Borges said over the phone. "We want to ensure that our customers are able to search the internet over Wi-Fi securely, so we will always work closely with our service provider when something like this comes up."

"We don't have any concern that this is widespread across any of our stores," Borges continued. In a way, using any laptop that logs into the Wi-Fi at a busy coffee shop to mine cryptocurrency is a genius way to generate revenue. In another, more salient way, it’s completely invasive and inappropriate. Next time you’re checking email while sipping an espresso at your favourite joint, it might pay to investigate if your computer is chugging along.


Download SafeUM — communicate privately, without advertising and spam.

Tags:
Wi-Fi hackers information leaks
Source:
Motherboard
1954
Other NEWS
3 Jul 2020 safeum news imgage An encrypted messaging service has been infiltrated by police
4 May 2020 safeum news imgage Two-Factor Authentication ​What Is It and Why You Should Use It
12 Dec 2019 safeum news imgage Encryption is under threat - this is how it affects you
4 Nov 2019 safeum news imgage Should Big Decisions Be Based on Data or Your Intuition?
7 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage VPNFilter malware infecting 500,000 devices is worse than we thought
4 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage Hackers target Booking.com in criminal bid to steal hundreds of thousands from customers
1 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage Operator of World's Top Internet Hub Sues German Spy Agency
30 May 2018 safeum news imgage US says North Korea behind malware attacks
29 May 2018 safeum news imgage Facebook and Google targeted as first GDPR complaints filed
25 May 2018 safeum news imgage A new reason to not buy these cheap Android devices
24 May 2018 safeum news imgage Flaws in smart pet devices, apps could come back to bite owners
23 May 2018 safeum news imgage Google sued for 'clandestine tracking' of 4.4m UK iPhone users' browsing data
21 May 2018 safeum news imgage LocationSmart reportedly leaked phone location data onto the web
18 May 2018 safeum news imgage The SEC created its own scammy ICO to teach investors a lesson
17 May 2018 safeum news imgage Thieves suck millions out of Mexican banks in transfer heist
All news
SafeUM
Confidential Terms of Use Our technologies Company
Follow us
Download
SafeUM © Safe Universal Messenger

Axarhöfði 14,
110 Reykjavik, Iceland

Iceland - 2015