I guess the only questions that matter are:
1)Did nicehash incorporate the fake 5.5d phoenixminer?
2)Does the fake 5.5d phoenixminer contain a virus or trojan?
And if so, what does it do to windows pcs? And why has no
one reported any issues?
P.S. My thoughts on this is there probably is no malware or we would know it by now.
Secondly it is VERY hard to inject malware in a closed miner without the source code,
which the scammers would not have. To me the worst thing they could have done
(but good for their pocket books), is to hex edit replace phoenixminer devs address
with their address, so they would get the 1% mining fee instead of the real dev.
While this is obviously a problem, it wouldn't affect any users and wouldn't really be
malware or a reason to wipe your PC. It would only be stealing from the real dev.
and his hard work. In any case, my guess is either there is no malware or an address
replacement modification has been made. In either case I don't think anyone needs
to wipe their PC. Just delete any phoenixminer entries on your drive, delete any registry
entries labeled phoenixminer, and uninstall the plug in from nicehashminer until they
publicly say it is safe to use again. I just don't buy into the NH theory that it could be
a future ticking time bomb that steals all your bitcoin and passwords a year down the road.
That would be EXTREMELY difficult to pull off and get around most av and anti-malware programs.