The usage of Bitcoin is supported by miners. Bitcoin miners run their computer to extend the blockchain for the reward. The more people use Bitcoin, the more tasks are required to confirm the transaction. Therefore, miners are eager to get fast CPUs as many as possible.
Just recently, an incident occurred in a Starbucks store in Argentina. It was ten seconds delay of internet connection to the free Wi-fi provided by the store. It seemed a tiny event. But, one of the customers did not miss the meaning of this phenomenon.
Noah Dinkin, Stensul CEO, found that his own PC could be utilized to mining secretly. He identified a suspicious code on his machine which also ran mining program. It suggested that someone had cracked his PC to enhance the speed of mining.
International Business Times: 'Nothing is free': Starbucks' WiFi hijacked customers' laptops to secretly mine cryptocurrency
Following the alert of Dinkin, Starbucks fixed this issue immediately, to declare the safety use of the internet in all Starbucks store. However, it is not clarified who had conducted such a trick.
To be honest, I prospected this kind of the issue. The blockchain is one of the architectures of distributed computing. In distributed computing, massively many owners of computers are collaboratively sharing the task of calculation. It leads to a successful calculation of extremely complicated formula. In this situation, if a person throws a malware to control the PCs connected to the internet, he can utilize the whole ability of the PC network. It is unlikely the victims notice the suspicious movement of their PC because each PC are not burdened so much during the shared task.
I guess similar crimes will be conducted everywhere. I am afraid Bitcoin will lose the reliability due to such silly crimes.
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