Is there a way to check whether a website is running a cryptocurrency miner? I load mastodon.art into Vivaldi and leave it running in the background. After a couple of days, it has pegged my CPU. Sure sounds like a miner to me! It doesn't do this in Firefox or Chrome. I have those browsers clamped down pretty hard with uBlock Origin and a few other things. I keep Vivaldi unencumbered by adblockers, so I can open obstinate sites over there that won't render in FF or Chrome. (I keep mastodon.art running in Vivaldi, so it doesn't distract or tempt me while I'm doing important stuff in Firefox.)
Web site's page code looks clean to me. Also didn't see any increased CPU activity on my PC. I obviously didn't log in to the web site.
Yes. The CPU load seems normal for a while. I only notice things dragging after a couple of days. It could be a weird bug in Vivaldi, but I haven't heard of bugs that consume CPU.
Keeping a browser constantly open is a security risk; especially when the PC is unattended. Basically, you have open ports exposed to the world.
Leaving browsers open for days can in many cases affect CPU, but particularly Memory. You do realize also that they are constantly writing to the disk? And with recent browser versions, the more tabs open the more writing. And of course, itman is spot on.
I guess I assumed that was only a theoretical risk. The browser is supposed to sandbox the tabs (but I guess they're not so good at that). The computer has a firewall running, and it's behind a router. I don't have Flash or Java installed. I don't have any PDFs open in the browser. Why would the browser be a bigger risk than any other program? They all phone home these days. It seems like I'm always hearing about how this program or that program is discovered to have open ports with "admin" "admin" credentials. I know about memory leaks. I've seen that with other programs. I've never heard of a "CPU leak". That's why I thought something was suspicious. I forgot about that. This computer has an SSD.
Presume the problematic browser is Vivaldi? I am unfamiliar with how it works. If you don't run Vivaldi with mastodon.art site open you don't have this problem? For grins next time you run this set up, run the following: Task Manager Resource Monitor or Process Monitor or Process Hacker Moo0 Connection Watcher (or TCPView or similar) Moo0 File Monitor (or similar) Let us know and maybe we can help track things further. I am wondering if there is some art there that is driving this problem? Seems odd - but so is this problem.
I left the site open in Chrome for a couple of days, but nothing happened. I have uBlock Origin installed in Chrome, which might somehow be involved. I use Firefox for everyday browsing. Haven't tried it in there for a while. Vivaldi is based on Chromium, so I assume 98% of the code is the same. I'm on a Mac. I leave Activity Monitor running, which is how I identified the culprit. I don't know if it has any useful diagnostics. I'll investigate those programs you mentioned to see if they run on the Mac or there are equivalents that do.
There have been problems with CPU https://vivaldi.com/blog/snapshots/a-fix-for-excessive-cpu-vivaldi-browser-snapshot-1-15-1099-3/ Are you able to open the built-n Vivaldi Task Manager to see if any info there helps?
What do you know! A "CPU leak"! I considered that this might be due to a bug in Vivaldi, but since cryptomining is so prevalent right now, that was my number one suspect. That's a neat tool! I didn't know it existed. OK, so I just reopened Vivaldi and logged into mastodon.art. I'll just let it run for a while. It seemed to not show up for a couple of days, so I might have to wait.
Glad to see the "leaking memory" issue was brought up. Other software can also do so. AV realtime executables are notorious for this.
OK. I have left Vivaldi running for three days while logged into mastodon.art. There is no abnormal CPU activity. It should have happened by now. It had been doing it consistently for the past couple of weeks. I don't know what to make of this. Same version of Vivaldi. Same website. If there was a cryptominer on there, it isn't there now.
