Let's look at this from a different vector.
I don't use cgminer, but these miners come with a certain amount of remote management right?
Can affected users confirm these ports are exposed to the internet? Possibly you use it yourself to monitor your miner while away from the house?
Wouldn't it be more plausible an exploit was found in the miner's API that allows an attacker to issue such commands?
Try changing your API password to something much stronger?
That was my first thought also, that either the API or the API manager was breeched.
- open port for the API, API web management with weak or no password, etc
I have no open ports for API, or Web Management. I use PFSense for my router/firewall. I have a dedicated laptop with fresh install of Win 7 with Logmein, then SSH onto the Rigs from that point.
This is quite puzzling.
Particularly because of how there have been reports from pretty much all multipools (which are the most likely targets, or rather the most likely to report it due to having the majority of all scrypt miners).
I'm not buying the idea the stratums themselves are compromised at least. Especially on multipools the stratum servers are quite custom. It's unlikely all of these have a common attack vector.
Has anyone reported having this issue using a miner that is not based/derived from cgminer? Like a cudaminer user?
But yes, looks like we're going to need some packet logs from before through after a switch occurred.
As for the dude that says its not worth it mining, I think you should start a facebook page and get others to join so you guys can sell your GPU's on ebay. If you get enough miners onboard, our profits should go up quite a bit.
On a serious note though, we'll hit a shut-off point for GPU users in countries with high electricity costs soon.
These users might actually do well in selling off their GPUs to recoup some of the investment.
Those who have gridseed units (and didn't pay stupidly much for it) will be able to survive a much larger profitability drop before reaching a point where they have to shut down.
As long as they bring in more than they cost in electricity (which is really low for these units), they'll keep running.
Of course the owner might not see ROI if profitability keeps dropping, but that still won't cause the owner to shut down the unit. At most they'll sell the unit and it'll keep on chugging for a new owner.
Nutshell: Total scrypt hashrate is going to keep climbing for a while.