Google is doubling down on its stance regarding cryptocurrencies, removing mining extensions from its Chrome Web Store.
The move comes after the company found many bad actors in the store, and now no add-ons that offer cryptocurrency mining will be added to the store. Plug-ins offering blockchain-related services are still allowed within Google’s guidelines, provided mining isn’t among them.
In a terse blog, a Google representative on the Chromium team pointed out that “Over the past few months, there has been a rise in malicious extensions that appear to provide useful functionality on the surface, while embedding hidden cryptocurrency mining scripts that run in the background without the user’s consent. These mining scripts often consume significant CPU resources, and can severely impact system performance and power consumption.”
The blog then went on to point out that, though Google had previously allowed mining add-ons as long as that was their only stated purpose, “Ninety per cent of all extensions with mining scripts that developers have attempted to upload to Chrome Web Store have failed to comply with these policies, and have been either rejected or removed”.
“Starting today (April 2),” it continued, “Chrome Web Store will not longer accept extensions that mine cryptocurrency.”
All existing extensions that mine cryptocurrency will get a brief stay of execution, before eventually being delisted from the Chrome Web Store in late June.
As The Register points out, alt-coin-generating scripts are known to take CPU performance hostage, be taken down by antivirus and ad blockers, and are frequently used by cybercriminals for crypto-jacking.