Dropbox ditches unlimited storage offering, blaming crypto cloud miners
The web storage platform Dropbox has binned its limitless storage plan after discovering a few of its customers had been utilizing the service for resource-intensive functions like mining crypto.
In an Aug. 24 weblog publish, Dropbox stated its limitless Superior plan has as an alternative moved to a metered storage plan with new customers getting 15 terabytes of storage — apparently sufficient to deal with 100 million paperwork.
It added it knew its “all of the area you want” plan would lead to uneven utilization ranges however in latest months it had seen a surge in some customers consuming “1000’s of instances extra storage than our real enterprise prospects.”
“A rising variety of prospects had been shopping for Superior subscriptions to not run a enterprise or group, however as an alternative for functions like crypto and Chia mining.”
Dropbox stated different high-resource makes use of included some reselling its storage or a number of people pooling storage for private use.
Screenshot of earlier plan exhibiting storage as “As a lot area as wanted.” Supply: CBackup
Dropbox cited the elevated unintended utilization progress following “different providers making related coverage modifications.” Microsoft and Google have additionally scrapped their limitless storage plans in latest months.
The corporate stated it understands the transfer is “disappointing” however added it might be unsustainable and troublesome to implement an inventory of unacceptable use instances.
Up to now, hackers have used cryptojacking malware that’s inserted right into a sufferer’s internet-connected gadget or cloud-storage account.
The bug makes use of the sources of the gadget or cloud service to create a digital machine that mines cryptocurrencies.
In 2021, Google stated some attackers concentrating on its storage platform customers might compromise an account and set up mining software program inside 22 seconds.
