Cloud vendors should take some responsibility for stolen compute, says Canalys CEO

Canalys CEO Steve Brazier has proposed that cloud vendors should have similar accountability to credit card companies when accounts are hacked and used to mine cryptocurrency. As cryptocurrencies crashed around the world and the cost to mine the digital assets through owned equipment ate away at what value remained, miners …

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

By the sound of it, it seems as though crypto has been an absolute gold mine for chip manufacturers and cloud services alike. As they switch from proof-of-work (like Bitcoin) to proof of stake (like Ethereum recently did), that gold mine is closing down. I personally wouldn't be surprised to see chip prices to go down as they overestimate inventory, while cloud services get rapidly more expensive to make up for the shortfall. As usual, the end users (i.e. everyone who isn't a millionaire) will end up paying for it all.

[ecofeco]

Right?

Cui bono?

[Anonymous Coward]

Were cloud services being contracted to mine? I didn't get that from the article, and it sounds kind of expensive. I get it that cloud service are being hacked but I doubt cloud providers will profit much from that due to court costs, lost cases, and lost customers.

[Blazde]

If it ever became meaningfully profitable to mine on spot instances you'd expect the cloud providers themselves to immediately notice and be all over using that compute to mine for themselves. Spot prices would end up being a bit above the profitable level.

Just as, as soon as some entrepreneurial retailer makes decent money selling for example 'Pack of 4 Tooth Fairy Golden Coins For Kids'(*) on Amazon's marketplace, Amazon themselves start listing the item at a slightly cheaper price to claim the business.

(*) I bothered to find a real example, check it out

[SVD_NL]

Yup, they'd at the very least put every last cycle of idle compute into crypto mining if it was profitable for them.

Profitable being more complicated than power cost vs income, with reputation being a huge factor.

They'll need to disclose this stream of income publicly, and a lot of people don't take too kindly to mass mining, and it conflicts with the sustainability goals many of them claim to pursue