ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

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ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by MateoTheBold! » Wed May 01, 2013 12:22 pm

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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by The Domer » Wed May 01, 2013 12:48 pm

Slimy indeed. They've done a poor job of making excuses to cover their tracks. I do wonder though, if anything will actually come of this.

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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by Boss Llama » Wed May 01, 2013 1:48 pm

Intruiging, though unsurprising that it got done somewhere.

I don't know what kind of EULA users "sign" by using their service, but unless this use was specified in it, it's probably illegal. It turned their client in to Malware akin to any other cheap trick out there. Bitcoin mining has been one of the recent pushes in the hackverse, and installing miners on peoples' systems without their knowledge or consent is a big thing in the illegal computing industry of late. I'd love to see this one prosecuted as the deliberate attack it is, though really it's very small potatos compared to most folks out there doing it.

Honestly now, I don't imagine any real harm was done to peoples' computers in this period, but that doesn't make it legal or acceptable. If Valve wanted to, Steam could easily do the same thing to its users, and we'd all blindly click "ok" on the updated terms without reading them. It would be daft and it's not something they're liable to do, but that's the nature of third party clients and the mass market blithely giving in to the idea that everything should be mediated through a cloud or some other remote service provider. See my anti-Steam rants of 2007-2008, or my anti cloud-computing rants more recently. Steam has thusfar managed to (usually) demonstrate a reasonably good way to handle such things. This ESEA stuff is one of a litany of examples of the bad way.

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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by YoullNeverWalkAlone » Wed May 01, 2013 3:18 pm

Can someone give me the layman's version of bitcoin mining?
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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by Masakari » Wed May 01, 2013 3:28 pm

My thoughts are this, in order (And after getting some background and context from someone familiar with them):

-It really sucks for people who are innocent bystanders. Bitcoin mining, if not coded well, could put a lot of stress on the card and cause hardware failures.
-Good on what sounds like the majority of the CS:GO community and anyone else deciding to GTFO. That is the correct response in this situation.
-Anyone else staying because they offer a chance at huge prizes I have no sympathy for at all. Sounds like this isn't the first time ESEA has done something dumb, and I'd be shocked if it was the last.
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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by OmgOhnoes » Wed May 01, 2013 3:43 pm

You'llNeverWalkAlone wrote:Can someone give me the layman's version of bitcoin mining?
You can "mine" or "earn" bitcoins by running the software and participating in the P2P network supporting Bitcoin transactions.

It's basically earning free "money" for participating in the network which can then be used like standard bit coins to purchase goods and/or services.

However, it takes a very strong computer or many many computers to make it extremely viable. So they basically stole processing power from their ESEA users. Bitcoin mining software also has a tendency to maximize CPU (as what do they care if they are already stealing your processing power they want to maximize it) so in the long run you could potentially damage your hardware or reduce it's life expectancy.
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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by Boss Llama » Wed May 01, 2013 3:53 pm

You'llNeverWalkAlone wrote:Can someone give me the layman's version of bitcoin mining?
Quick and dirty:

-Bitcoins are a virtual currency with real-world value.
-Bitcoins are "mined" (created) by having your computer solve very complex math problems.
-Once mined, a bitcoin is deposited in a secure online wallet where it can be sold for cash to other investors, or used to pay for real goods or services from vendors who accept them.
-Bitcoins theoretically have value because they are based on time and labor - the "work" required to solve the math problems. Also, they do have certain supply and demand parameters programmed in - the more there are, the harder the math gets, and the more slowly coins will be mined until the eventual maximum allowed is reached.
-The bitcoin market is much like the stock market, but without a company behind the stock - it's completely speculative, and is held up by its investors belief in the value of it, and their willingness to exchange it for, or accept it in place of, real-world money.

The issue discussed here is caused by:

-Mining programs can use a massive amount of system resources, to the point it harms your computer.
-Mining programs were installed as malware on the computers of a bunch of gamers who used the ESEA client for competitive gaming.
-The coins mined were whisked away to the wallet of one of the ESEA staffers
-ESEA, or certain elements of it, appears to be lying about what happened and attempting to deflect responsibiliity
-ESEA, or certain elements of it, has apparently done crap like this before

The amount in question, $3602, isn't a huge number by criminal standards, but let's look at it this way - they mined that in 2 weeks by seizing the computers of their user base. If you annualize that, it's approximately three times the median household income in the United States. Not a bad return for the holders of the three accounts it was apparently paying in to.
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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by black_and_blue » Wed May 01, 2013 6:50 pm

Alizée Fan wrote:
You'llNeverWalkAlone wrote:Can someone give me the layman's version of bitcoin mining?
The amount in question, $3602, isn't a huge number by criminal standards, but let's look at it this way - they mined that in 2 weeks by seizing the computers of their user base. If you annualize that, it's approximately three times the median household income in the United States. Not a bad return for the holders of the three accounts it was apparently paying in to.
To give an idea of just how much processing power it would take to mine that amount, about a year ago, I set my GPU to join a mining pool whenever my screensaver was on. In a month, I managed to mine about 0.1 bitcoins.

The problems being solved have become much, much harder since then, as you can see at http://bitcoindifficulty.com/. That said, the value of bitcoins has also gone up a lot since then.

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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by YoullNeverWalkAlone » Wed May 01, 2013 7:12 pm

Wow. So normally this would be something that a user would sign up to do. Allow their processing power to be used in exchange for these bitcoins. Someone then planted it as part of a malware type program that used people computers without their consent. The currency generated then went to the people who planted the malware.

This sounds like the updated version of Superman II's scheme (then later Office Space).

I am so far behind in computer technology its scary.
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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by Buzzy Beetle » Wed May 01, 2013 9:16 pm

Alizée Fan wrote:
You'llNeverWalkAlone wrote:Can someone give me the layman's version of bitcoin mining?
Quick and dirty:

-Bitcoins are a virtual currency with real-world value.
-Bitcoins are "mined" (created) by having your computer solve very complex math problems.
-Once mined, a bitcoin is deposited in a secure online wallet where it can be sold for cash to other investors, or used to pay for real goods or services from vendors who accept them.
-Bitcoins theoretically have value because they are based on time and labor - the "work" required to solve the math problems. Also, they do have certain supply and demand parameters programmed in - the more there are, the harder the math gets, and the more slowly coins will be mined until the eventual maximum allowed is reached.
-The bitcoin market is much like the stock market, but without a company behind the stock - it's completely speculative, and is held up by its investors belief in the value of it, and their willingness to exchange it for, or accept it in place of, real-world money.

The issue discussed here is caused by:

-Mining programs can use a massive amount of system resources, to the point it harms your computer.
-Mining programs were installed as malware on the computers of a bunch of gamers who used the ESEA client for competitive gaming.
-The coins mined were whisked away to the wallet of one of the ESEA staffers
-ESEA, or certain elements of it, appears to be lying about what happened and attempting to deflect responsibiliity
-ESEA, or certain elements of it, has apparently done crap like this before

The amount in question, $3602, isn't a huge number by criminal standards, but let's look at it this way - they mined that in 2 weeks by seizing the computers of their user base. If you annualize that, it's approximately three times the median household income in the United States. Not a bad return for the holders of the three accounts it was apparently paying in to.
Now consider: ESEA players aren't just community members. They're paying customers. League fees are $7/month regardless of the game you play and ESEA sports a userbase of ~20k players from various competitive games. Also consider the power draw to keep a machine clocked at 100% GPU for bitcoin mining and the potential for wrecked hardware (and some players did have fried cards due to this).

While they are aiming to donate the amount to charity and match it the other thing they're planning on doing is giving all of their users a free month of service for free (again, $7 "value") and said that anyone with hardware problems can open a support ticket. For a league that has notoriously bad customer support. Oh, and they're increasing the prize pool next season! So hey keep reaching for that carrot on a stick! You might actually get it this time!

The player reaction has left me incredibly saddened. ESEA is the top-level TF2 6s league simply because there is no other league like it. Which is to say, it's the only 6s league with a prize pool that only the very top level players will ever see a return from. It's still enough to make people complain about how they were wronged but do nothing about it. In fact a large number of them are hoping this whole thing blows over so that there will be seasons afterwards. "There is no better league so I'm going to wait it out until another one comes along." These people have Stockholm syndrome and it is very depressing to watch. At least a lot of the more mature players from other games (like CS:GO) are taking their business elsewhere but still...

What ESEA has done is theft - taken advantage of resources they had no authorization for with other people footing the electricity bills. I'm pretty sure it's illegal and I hope they pay for the damage they've done and then some.
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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by Cpt._Keyes » Wed May 01, 2013 10:44 pm

You'llNeverWalkAlone wrote: The problems aren't being solved because they need solving for science or anything - they exist solely to control the bitcoin supply.
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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by Boss Llama » Thu May 02, 2013 6:33 am

What they did was create a botnet, just like the one's that do DDoS attacks, and autodialers in the days of old. In this case, it was set to bitcoin mining. That's being seen more and more out there these days because it's free money. It has been suggested (with at least a certain amount of evidence, I might add) that several of the wild swings in bitcoin valuation recently have been deliberate manipulations by hacking groups to exploit their increasingly large holdings through buy low and sell high. It's like a stock market, but only regulated by "teh interwebz."
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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by Inner » Thu May 02, 2013 9:50 am

Fasinating stuff. Thanks for the link and the various explanations, I am now much better informed.

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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by Crusty Juggler » Thu May 02, 2013 2:58 pm

Buzzy Beetle wrote:The player reaction has left me incredibly saddened. ESEA is the top-level TF2 6s league...*more pertinent observations*
You hit the nail on the head, Buzzy B. As soon as I heard about this I checked the ESEA forums and saw the same thing. Stockholm Syndrome, like you said.

Even if you take the ESEA admins explanations at face value, it still exemplifies incompetence and jarate poor concern for their customers security. The fact that their apologies are almost entirely written in lower case and peppered with "lol" makes me question their maturity as well.

I'm not a lawyer, but like Buzzy I'm also pretty sure it's illegal. Certainly could open them to civil action.
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Re: ESEA Bitcoin Fiasco

Post by jettah » Thu Jul 25, 2013 6:10 pm

I just read through the whole link provided and it was the work of one admin who used a trial run of something internal for his own profit. One bad apple I guess. The entirety of the company is not to blame. Of course one admin responded quickly to a situation that arose with most likely limited information.

I used to work for ESEA for 3 years and had nothing but a positive experience with them as both a web contributor and server admin. Craig "Torbull" Levine is a great guy and his willingness to immediately admit fault and offer restitution in any form is more than most companies will ever do. I have a free lifetime membership with ESEA and use their services and pro shop on a rare occasion.

I am sure that through the support tickets and proving of damages done to computer hardware, that on an individual basis ESEA will make it right with the individuals who had hardware damages.
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