Antivirus Giant Norton’s Cryptomining Scandal: Here’s What Is Actually Happening

As discovered by Cory Doctorow, a digital activist, Norton, the antivirus giant that we all know, hid a crypto-miner in the consumer software. Recently, it turned out to be an actual feature of the antivirus program. According to the information on Norton’s website, you can put your computer up to mining when you are not using it for a 15% fee that goes to Norton.

But what is the problem with a mining antivirus?

While some claim that this feature is just an intermediary for gaining full CPU control for the program, others are worried that it can cause security issues for the average user because of the complexity. It can be pretty ironic if you remind yourself that Norton is one of the biggest cyber-security companies in the world. Another thing is that some users claimed that there are problems with turning off the feature once they have opted for it, which brings questions about how voluntary the feature is.

Cryptocurrency Mining. Pixabay photo

Antivirus issues

While antivirus software is usually associated with lots of CPU usage, low performance, wrong actions on non-malware, hidden system trails, and much more, it brings to the light how much the need for transparently working security software is there. While this kind of software needs to walk on a fine line of being hidden enough and being controllable enough, this kind of news surely does not sound good in terms of trust in the software.

Speaking of which, maybe it is important to emphasize that a big chunk of errors that cause security breaches are due to human errors. So, it is usually better to educate yourself on how to protect yourself and your computer from the digital world’s techno-villains. Who knows, maybe you will not even need extra security except your default defender.

You can check Norton’s own declaration about it from Get started with Norton Crypto. But beware, it will be a little bit biased.