Gaming sotfware company E-Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA) has been fined $1 million after it was discovered they secretly added Bitcoin mining software as part of a standard product update this year.
14,000 customers received the code, which helped ESEA mine 30 Bitcoins over two weeks in May. At current prices, those coins are worth a little over $17,000. "What transpired the past two weeks is a case of an employee acting on his own and without authorization to access our community through our company's resources," ESEA co-founder Craig Levine said at the time.
The company blamed a single employee, who has been fired. Regardless, the company is facing a class-action lawsuit in California over the situation.
As part of the settlement, ESEA will pay $325,000 of the fine, and will only need to pay the rest of the penalty if it is ever caught "misbehaving" again. "These defendants illegally hijacked thousands of people's personal computers without their knowledge or consent, and in doing so gained the ability to monitor their activities, mine for virtual currency that had real dollar value, and otherwise invade and damage their computers," the attorney general's office said.
The company blamed a single employee, who has been fired. Regardless, the company is facing a class-action lawsuit in California over the situation.
As part of the settlement, ESEA will pay $325,000 of the fine, and will only need to pay the rest of the penalty if it is ever caught "misbehaving" again. "These defendants illegally hijacked thousands of people's personal computers without their knowledge or consent, and in doing so gained the ability to monitor their activities, mine for virtual currency that had real dollar value, and otherwise invade and damage their computers," the attorney general's office said.
