
NortonLifelock has added the ability to mine Ethereum cryptocurrency directly within its Norton 360 antivirus program as a way to “protect” users from malicious mining software known as Norton Crypto
When Norton Crypto is enabled, the software will use the device’s graphics card (GPU) to mine for Ethereum, which will then be transferred into a Norton wallet hosted in the cloud.
As the difficulty of mining Ethereum by yourself is very high, Norton users will likely be pooled together for greater chances of mining a block. If Norton is operating a pool for this new feature, they may take a small fee of all mined Ethereum as is common among pool operators, making this new feature a revenue generator for the company.
As cryptocurrency miners and related software are commonly flagged by antivirus software, Norton says that this feature allows users to mine Ethereum without sacrificing their security.