The Pirate Bay put code on some of its web pages that used a portion of visitors' unused machines to mine virtual currency. The hidden code helped the file-sharing site to generate coins for the monero digital currency, which is currently worth around $100 per coin. Ad-blockers or browser add-ons that stopped scripts being run on web pages would also disable the mining code, the administrators said. In an interview with TorrentFreak, founder Peter Sunde, who has been running the website since 2003, said he was surprised by how quickly his servers were able to handle the influx in traffic.
The Pirate Bay put code on some of its web pages that used a portion of visitors' unused machines to mine virtual currency. The hidden code helped the file-sharing site to generate coins for the monero digital currency, which is currently worth around $100 per coin. In an interview with TorrentFreak, founder Peter Sunde, who has been running the website since 2003, said he was surprised by how quickly his servers were able to handle the influx in traffic.