Frequent users of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) recently took to social media to accuse the organization of running a covert mining script without their users’ consent. The users allege that the covert mining script was run on Fight Pass, the UFC's video streaming service. The script was discovered to be mining Monero, a particularly popular cryptocurrency of the Dark Web community.
Currently, Fight Pass is available to users in over 150 regions and has a total of 450,000 subscribers. Subscribers are charged $9 monthly, which excludes pay-per-view shows on third party streaming devices and services such as Apple TV, Android, Xbox, Roku, Chromecast, and Amazon Fire TV.
UFC joins the latest slew of websites which has been looking towards mining scripts to gain profits from their web traffic. Most notably, the media downloading platform, The Pirate Bay, admitted running a mining script to experiment with methods of generating revenue other than advertising.
What makes the UFC case so bizarre is that they already enjoy profits from both their subscription services and advertisers. Considering the relatively little profit that could be gained from a mining script, it seems odd that the sports platform would choose to implement it at all.
While UFC is yet to confirm or deny the accusations, it seems more likely that the website fell victim either to hackers or employees looking to covertly reap profits from their company’s web traffic.
To prevent your own device from being exploited to run mining scripts, experts have suggested to keep your security software and firewall settings up to date and to be wary of a sudden inexplicable slow down of your device.
Currently, Fight Pass is available to users in over 150 regions and has a total of 450,000 subscribers. Subscribers are charged $9 monthly, which excludes pay-per-view shows on third party streaming devices and services such as Apple TV, Android, Xbox, Roku, Chromecast, and Amazon Fire TV.
UFC joins the latest slew of websites which has been looking towards mining scripts to gain profits from their web traffic. Most notably, the media downloading platform, The Pirate Bay, admitted running a mining script to experiment with methods of generating revenue other than advertising.
What makes the UFC case so bizarre is that they already enjoy profits from both their subscription services and advertisers. Considering the relatively little profit that could be gained from a mining script, it seems odd that the sports platform would choose to implement it at all.
While UFC is yet to confirm or deny the accusations, it seems more likely that the website fell victim either to hackers or employees looking to covertly reap profits from their company’s web traffic.
To prevent your own device from being exploited to run mining scripts, experts have suggested to keep your security software and firewall settings up to date and to be wary of a sudden inexplicable slow down of your device.