Update Microsoft has quietly banned cryptocurrency mining from its online services, and says it did so to protect all of its cloud customers.
The Windows and Azure titan slipped the ban into an update to its Universal License Terms for Online Services that went into effect on December 1. This document covers any “Microsoft Hosted Service to which Customer subscribes under a Microsoft Volume Licensing Agreement”, and on The registerof reading, is mainly concerned with Azure.
Microsoft’s license change summary states: “Updated Acceptable Use Policy to clarify that cryptocurrency mining is prohibited without Microsoft’s prior approval.”
In the license itself there is practically no more information.
A section titled “Acceptable Use Policy” states: “Neither the Customer, nor those who access an Online Service through the Customer, may use an Online Service: to mine cryptocurrency without the prior written permission from Microsoft.”
Microsoft does not appear to have made this decision public beyond the Summary of Changes page and, in recent hours, in a Partner Advisory titled: “Important Actions Partners Should Take to Secure the Partner Ecosystem.”
This document states that “The Acceptable Use Policy has been updated to explicitly prohibit cryptocurrency mining in all Microsoft online services unless written pre-approval is granted by Microsoft”, and adds, “We suggest seeking written pre-approval from Microsoft before using Microsoft Online Cryptocurrency Mining Services, regardless of the length of a subscription.”
Microsoft said The register he made the switch because “cryptocurrency mining can disrupt or even harm online services and its users and can often be linked to cyber fraud and abusive attacks such as unauthorized access and use authorized customer resources.
“We made this change to further protect our customers and mitigate the risk of disruption or impairment of services in the Microsoft Cloud.”
Permission to mine crypto “may be considered for testing and research of security detections.”
Microsoft is not alone in banning crypto mining without permission. Google Cloud prohibits this without written permission (see clause 3.3). Oracle [PDF, see clause 1.3] and OVH do not allow it. Digital Ocean also requires written permission.
Amazon Web Services does not allow this in its free tier. Microsoft did the same for a while and banned student accounts from mining.
But there has never been such a blanket ban before. So why now?
Microsoft rushed the above statement to us, and before we received it, we speculated that Microsoft might be worried that miners might not be paying their cloud bills.
With the crypto sector in the throes of scandal and the values of many tokens well below all-time highs, miners’ positions can be… let’s say precarious. The fact that Microsoft reminded partners not to allow crypto mining supported this assumption as Microsoft does not deal directly with most customers. If anyone knows of any crypto miners using Azure, it’s the partners who signed them up.
The register also often hears rumors of Azure capacity shortages. Maybe Microsoft is trying to get rid of the crypto sector and find more stable customers for the infrastructure it has?
Our theory about the need for mining permission – Microsoft wouldn’t allow the computationally expensive proof-of-work techniques, but might allow the less demanding proof-of-stake method – turned out to be mere speculation if the company’s explanation was complete. ®
Updated at 0515 UTC, December 15
This story has been revised to include Microsoft’s explanation of its changed policy.
