uTorrent (may) Silent Install Crypto Currency Miner

[admin]

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Hide yo kids, hide yo wife, cuz uTorrent may be installing cryptocurrency miners all up in your PC. At some recent point in time, uTorrent users have been experiencing odd slowdowns and high CPU usage reports on their systems only to find that they were coming from a cryptocurrency miner installed on their system, called Epic Scale.

After some users went snooping, they discovered that Epic Scale was being installed with a uTorrent install/update, but whether it was a ploy from uTorrent or one of the many ad offers uTorrent has stuffed in their installers is unknown at this time. The situation isn't entirely clear, either, as the reports of this miner being installed are infrequent to a point that some users must be triggering something with their uTorrent updates/installers that is causing the silent install of the miner.

The silent install appears to happen selectively, and not on all machines. TF had confirmation from various sides and with screenshots of every step of the install process where no Epic Scale screen appeared. In one case, the opt-out screen was eventually shown after several re-installs.

BitTorrent Inc has made a small response to this claim, and originally didn't believe it at all after moderators deliberately deleted the first forum thread made on uTorrent's site regarding the issue.

"In terms of user complaints in our forums, we always take these claims seriously. We highly value our users, they are a passionate and tech savvy group. In the last 24 hours we have received less than a dozen inquiries out of several million offers."

"We have reviewed the issue closely and can confirm there is no silent install happening. We are continuing to look at the issue. But this is most likely these users accepted the offer during install."

Source

It's strongly recommended any uTorrent user checks their PC for any malware and miners that could or couldn't have been installed.

In the mean time, any uTorrent users should check out other (safer) torrent programs, such as qBittorent, Tixati, or Transmission. You can also find an older version of uTorrent, such as 2.2.1, which is considered the last "great" update from uTorrent.