Norton 360 antivirus software will soon mine cryptocurrency

NortonLifeLock will soon launch a feature that is not common in antivirus programs for Norton 360: a built-in miner, which will enable users to mine Ethereum. The company will begin providing access to the feature to selected participants of its early adopter program today, but it intends to provide Norton Crypto to all customers in the coming weeks.

The security software company is promoting the miner as a feature meant to "protect" its "customers' ever-evolving digital lives." Norton says you'd usually have to disable antivirus programs to run miners, since security programs typically block them, but its own miner will obviously be able to run alongside its antivirus product.

Norton Crypto uses a device's GPU to mine for Ethereum, which users can then transfer into a wallet that's stor

ed in the cloud to prevent accidental loss due to hardware failure. As BleepingComputer notes, though, Ethereum is quite difficult to mine especially in recent months, so users' efforts might be pooled together to have a better chance of mining a block. In that case, participants will have to divvy up their earnings, and Norton may be taking a small cut.

Gagan Singh, chief product officer at NortonLifeLock said in a statement:

"We are proud to be the first consumer cybersecurity company to provide cryptocurrency miners with the ability to safely and easily convert free time on their PCs into opportunities to earn digital currency. Using Norton Crypto, we Of customers can mine cryptocurrency with just a few clicks, thus avoiding many barriers to entering the cryptocurrency ecosystem. ”