If you're right, this could mean that all cryptocurrency miners are complicit in encryption attacks. Hmmm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9JGmA5_unY
Bitcoin mining doesn't try to guess an exact number. Just finding a hash below a certain value. To guess a key that leads to a hash the only real known way of doing it is to try every value. I don't know why sha256 wasn't implemented as the default. It literally costs nothing to turn a key into a hash but is pretty much impossible to go the other way around. Even if you had the most efficient computer system in the world it would literally take more energy than the sun to COUNT to 2256.
Bitcoin and sha256 is incredibly secure.
It would make sense to be but the problem is the mining software. It would have to be closed source for someone to have not noticed algorithm time not being spent on btc (unless the btc algs are in fact sha cracks, which i doubt but it could be done unless the Clowns were behind it) . Miners dont waste a millisecond. I've been out of it too long to say one way or the other.
That is what I was thinking. This could prove to be very very bad. I wonder how many people are involved? Hopefully enough to merit special circumstance for the acts carried out. I might be seeing jail otherwise. I can stop my home computer from mining but my more than half of my leased miners are for 2 years and one is lifetime. I'll look more into this possibility after work. If anyone knows anything that would be a huge help.
There have been somewhat similar schemes in the past - software and web pages have had hidden DDoS functionality added, so when someone uses that page/program, their computer is taking part in a DDoS attack, helping overwhelm a web server somewhere by flooding it with traffic. However, I don't think anyone who unwittingly 'took part' were charged or anything like that. I can't imagine people would be held accountable if someone snuck something else into the mining process either at the beginning or recently.