The extension to avoid crypto mining on the computer called No Coin is now available for the free Opera browser.
No Coin is an Opera browser extension that blocks web miners who use the user's CPU power to mine cryptocurrencies without their knowledge. For some versions, the Opera browser has added an ad blocker to its extensions, but after the most recent update, No Coin is available as an option to download. No Coin uses a blacklist blocking software such as Coinhive.
The repository of the NoCoin list can be found on Github. This is certified by MIT and is open source. It can be used in computer browsers with AdBlock, Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin extensions. For mobile devices it is available with Adblock Browser and from the Opera 50 version of the Opera browser it is available automatically.
This could be effective against Coinhive, a code that is added to the web portals and mine the Monero cryptocurrency without the user knowing. One of the best known cases of using Coinhive to obtain income was on the famous illegal download page The Pirate Bay, but many others have included the code.
An example of this type of activity is represented by the use of streaming of series and movies belonging to the CBS chain, which has been shown to use this code to mine cryptocurrencies. The devices were forced by the Showtime.com portals and its subsidiary ShowtimeAnytime.com to provide about 60% processing capacity while users visited the site, to perform the calculations concerning this work validation of Montero blockchain transactions .
No Coin is an extension of Chrome since September. later FireFox also added the extension that prevents web miners from mining without the user's consent.
Recently, a team of researchers demonstrated that the cryptocurrency mining by means of the navigator has evolved and has developed a modality so that the miner continues to take advantage of the processing power of others even when the user has closed all the visible windows. When this is the case, 50% of the CPU capacity is still used by a process linked to the browser.
In an exclusive interview for Criptonoticias, the computer security researcher and creator of Bad Packets Report, Troy Mursch, described this type of activity as a kidnapping of which users are not aware and explained that "an unregulated web miner can use all the CPU available (100% total). This is definitely notorious and disturbing for the users of laptops and desktop computers. Users of mobile devices will notice that their devices get hot and their battery is quickly consumed when the crypto hijacking is occurring. "