Tom’s Guide: Bitcoin efficiently requires a powerful computer, and few home computers are more powerful than gaming rigs. Enterprising hackers may have corrupted a pirated version of Ubisoft’s anticipated game “Watch Dogs” with insidious Bitcoin mining software.
According to the PC gaming site Gamecrastinate, a significant number of users downloading unauthorized “Watch Dogs” torrents reported a mysterious process called “winlogin.exe” (not the legitimate winlogon.exe) eating up to 25 percent of their CPUs’ processing cycles. A little research pegged the most recent program using that name as a fairly powerful Bitcoin miner.