3 advertisements on the Internet generate 5.5 times more revenue than cryptojacking

Key facts:

The research was conducted by the University of Crete and the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Cryptojacking generates serious negative effects on users' computers.

Malicious cryptocurrency mining on the web, also known as cryptojacking, dirve-by mining or hidden mining, never had the opportunity to become an alternative source of revenue or replace the classic ads.

According to new academic research published this month, a website that includes three ads generates 5.5 times more revenue than a website that deploys a cryptojacking script, for the average duration of a web visit.

To be profitable, a website that uses cryptojacking script would need to keep a user on its pages for more 5.53 minutes, the researchers said.

Mining in web search engines slows down computers

But keeping users in sites with cryptojacking scripting has negative side effects on the user's device, since web mining scripts quickly clog resources and slow down the user's device.

Researchers at the University of Crete and the University of Illinois at Chicago said that websites that use cryptojacking script end up consuming 59 times more CPU resources than a website that shows ads.

Websites with cryptojacking script also require 1.7 times more RAM than classic websites with ads.

In addition, websites maintained by cryptojacking generate 3.4 times more background traffic than sites maintained by advertisements, as they need to constantly report their profits to mining services.

The researchers also found that miners within the browser also severely affect parallel execution processes, as cryptojacking sites degrade the performance of parallel execution applications up to 57% when left in the browser background.

However, the research team said that visiting a website that uses cryptojacking script consumes 2.08 more energy on average than regular ad-based sites, and the user's device works with up to 52.8% more Of temperature.

Good in some places, but bad for most

However, the researchers conclude that cryptojacking can be an effective monetization scheme, but only for a certain class of websites, where users tend to spend a lot of time, such as movie streaming services or online games.

Here, browser miners have a good amount of time to collect revenue for website operators, revenue that would never have been available just by displaying a few ads when loading the page.

But, on the other hand, the use of classic ads will generate more benefits and avoid disturbing users with scripts that increase functions on their CPUs and slow down their devices, which can lead to damage to the reputation of websites that are They engage in such practices.

Cryptojacking is dead

The cryptojacking phenomenon on the web has largely disappeared these days, after experiencing an explosion at the end of 2017 and throughout 2018.

When it was launched, it was criticized as an alternative source of revenue for the classic ad-supported model, which has its own flaws and more.

However, mining within the browser never reached popular websites, and was mostly abused by groups of cybercriminals who hacked legitimate websites and left scripts to mine Monero devices on sites without permission.

Most cryptojacking operations died after the closure of the Coinhive service in March 2019 and, according to Malwarebytes, most of the websites that continue to work with browser miners are abandoned sites that have been hacked in the last two years and nobody He has bothered to clean them.