Google Chrome engineers are considering adding a special browser permission that will thwart the rising trend of in-browser cryptocurrency miners, the Bleeping Computer reported.
According to the source, there have been at least two complaints (bug reports) from concerned Chrome users that did not like having their resources hijacked by in-browser miners.
Google software engineer Ojan Vafai has a recommendation on how to handle the issue:
“If a site is using more than XX% CPU for more than YY seconds, then we put the page into "battery saver mode" where we aggressively throttle tasks and show a toast [notification popup] allowing the user to opt-out of battery saver mode. When a battery saver mode tab is backgrounded, we stop running tasks entirely.”
Vafai said they’d obviously need to refine the XX and YY variables to figure out what works best, but could start with egregious settings like 100 percent and 60 seconds.
For now, Chrome users can block in-browser miners via extensions like AntiMiner, No Coin, and minerBlock. Some ad blockers and antivirus products can also block some of these miners.
Discussions on the topic of in-browser miners have been going on the Chromium project's bug tracker since mid-September when Coinhive, the first such service, launched.