In 2018, KrebsOnSecurity unmasked the creators of Coinhive — a now-defunct cryptocurrency mining service that was being massively abused by cybercriminals — as the administrators of a popular German language image-hosting forum. In protest of that story, forum members donated hundreds of thousands of euros to nonprofits that combat cancer (Krebs means “cancer” in German). This week, the forum is celebrating its third annual observance of that protest to “fight Krebs,” albeit with a Coronavirus twist.
Images posted to the decidedly not-safe-for-work German-language image forum pr0gramm[.]com. Members have posted a large number of ‘thank you’ receipts from cancer research organizations that benefited from their fight cancer/krebs campaign.
On March 26, 2018, KrebsOnSecurity published Who and What is Coinhive, which showed the founder of Coinhive was the co-creator of the German forum pr0gramm[dot]com (not safe for work). I undertook the research because Coinhive’s code at the time was found on tens of thousands of hacked Web sites, and Coinhive seemed uninterested in curbing widespread abuse of its platform.
Pr0gramm’s top members accused KrebsOnSecurity of violating their privacy, even though all of the research published about them was publicly available online. In protest, the forum’s leaders urged members to donate money to medical research in a bid to find a cure for Krebs (i.e. “cancer”). They ended up raising more than a quarter-million dollars worth of donations from members.
Last year’s commemoration of the protest fundraiser — dubbed “Krebsaction” by Pr0gramm — raised almost $300,000 for anti-cancer research groups. Interestingly, annual protest fight krebs raises
