Urgent but not quite an emergency - mibbit widget bitcoin mining verification

Summary:

no that title is not a markov chain

Urgent but not quite an emergency - mibbit widget bitcoin mining verification

(account deleted) 11 Jan 2018 18:49

The mibbit widget now has a captcha by way of making your browser do a javscript bitcoin calculation - you may have to switch off your adblocker and hard refresh to see it.

This does not appear to be harmful.

I would still prefer if we replaced it with another widget, so I'm opening this thread for suggestions.

BEFORE WE GET STARTED: KiwiIRC is right out; it broke both bans and connections. No.

EDIT: Apparently coinhive - the thing used for this - is also used for malware. The "6th most common malware" as far as the first few google results are showing. While the captcha appears to be benign, if irritating, I'd still like it gone.

EDIT EDIT: Apparently this can put a relatively large amount of strain on your hardware if you're using a mobile device - which a lot of people do.

Last edited on 11 Jan 2018 19:00 by (account deleted) Show more

Re: Urgent but not quite an emergency - mibbit widget bitcoin mining verification

DrMagnus 11 Jan 2018 21:54

From a technical standpoint holy fuck is this scumbaggy as fuck.

On a scale of 1 to 10 of how unethical it is to generate money for your website, this is about a 7.

Any time someone asks you to mine virtual currency for them, to fuel the speculation bubble, they can fuck right off.

EDIT: And yes, I'm looking in to replacements. It's not looking good right now.

Last edited on 11 Jan 2018 21:59 by DrMagnus Show more

Re: Urgent but not quite an emergency - mibbit widget bitcoin mining verification

ProcyonLotor 11 Jan 2018 22:57

I would recommend disabling the mibbit embed ASAP. May be drastic, I know, but I am 100% not alright with shoving this on unsuspecting users. Perhaps put up Kiwi in the interim. It's not ideal, but it's better than this.

Re: Urgent but not quite an emergency - mibbit widget bitcoin mining verification

(account deleted) 12 Jan 2018 01:12

Kaktus has made a good case for CGI IRC as our new embed.

There don't appear to be any serious problems with it. It works, I'm not aware of it breaking bans, it's not any less user friendly than any other browser based IRC client.

I'm assuming any genuinely huge issues about CGI IRC will show up on this thread by the time I'm online tomorrow and so, if they don't, I'm pushing CGI IRC to the chat guide as our new embed client then. A short time period, yes, but this thread is clearly marked urgent.

Re: Urgent but not quite an emergency - mibbit widget bitcoin mining verification

djkaktus 12 Jan 2018 01:22

I have determined a quick, dirty, and fairly barebones solution to this crisis. Using a feature Wikidot has built in (with some slight tinkering) you can use CGI:IRC's web client to connect to synirc. The code is as follows:

SEE BELOW

Biggest problem right now is that it doesn't autopopulate the channel field to #site17 or whatever else you'd want it to be. It's not a huge issue to just change that, but I can see it being sort of a hassle to explain to people who have no idea what they're doing.

Anyway, it's definitely not perfect, but it's clean and doesn't show any signs of cryptocurrency mining, so it's probably not the worst option. You can go check out kaktuskontainer.wikidot.com to see it in action.

Edit: Jabyrwock came through in the clutch, and fixed the frame so it autopopulates with the right channel name.

[[embed]]
<iframe src="http://webchat.synirc.net/?chan=site17" width="647" height="400"></iframe>
[[/embed]]

Last edited on 12 Jan 2018 08:15 by djkaktus Show more

Changing of the embedded client

(account deleted) 12 Jan 2018 14:37

Changed the 05 widget.

I need a moderator to edit the chat guide, or unlock it for me. Replace the mibbit code with the code below.

[[embed]]
<iframe src="http://webchat.synirc.net/?chan=site19" width="647" height="400"></iframe>
[[/embed]]

Re: Changing of the embedded client

Moklin 12 Jan 2018 15:58

As of writing this, the widgets for Community Outreach, Site Crit, Disciplinary, Internet Outreach, Licensing, Rewrite, & Technical need to be updated.

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66 Main St • Bar Harbor, ME • 44.389718, -68.204654

Re: Changing of the embedded client

djkaktus 12 Jan 2018 22:17

I've taken the liberty of updating those pages with the new module. It isn't pretty, but it should work.

Edit: ChaoSera is a steely-eyed missile man.

Last edited on 12 Jan 2018 22:28 by djkaktus Show more

Re: Changing of the embedded client

ProcyonLotor 12 Jan 2018 23:01

The chat guide has been changed as well.

Re: Urgent but not quite an emergency - mibbit widget bitcoin mining verification

ProcyonLotor 28 Jan 2018 16:44

Due to continued technical errors with the replacement client routing newbies to #synirc, resulting in IRCop complaints(!!!), with chat admin permission the chat embed has been disabled temporarily, pending another solution. If anyone knows of any more embeds, now's a great time to speak up before we have to switch back to Mibbit or Kiwi.

Last edited on 28 Jan 2018 16:55 by ProcyonLotor Show more

Re: this whole disaster

(account deleted) 28 Jan 2018 17:06

We checked mibbit and it doesn't appear to be doing the bitcoin thing anymore so it's back because people keep landing in the wrong place with CGIIRC.

If it starts doing the bitcoin thing again, I'd appreciate if any of our regular readers would let us know in #site17.