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Well, we've seen past stories on viruses co-opting Raspberry Pi units to mine cryptocurrency, and websites mining a few coins on their viewers' systems, but it took some crafty boffins in Russia to really give the issue some scale. International Business Times has the story, dated 9 Feb 2018...
Russian security officials arrested a number of scientists working at a secret Russian nuclear weapons facility for allegedly using lab equipment to mine for cryptocurrencies, according to Russia's Interfax News Agency.
[The facility's computers are] supposed to be isolated; they are kept disconnected from the internet in order to prevent any outside intrusion or hacking efforts. That was violated by the engineers who decided to use the supercomputer rigs to mine for cryptocurrency.
Mining for cryptocurrency requires a considerable amount of processing power—something the average computer might struggle to provide but a supercomputer designed for work on nuclear weapons surely has the capacity for.
The story does not specify the cryptocurrency or cryptocurrencies the scientists were trying to mine, nor whether any mining was successful.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10 2018, @10:46PM (3 children)
...the cryptocurrency or cryptocurrencies the scientists were trying to mine, nor whether any mining was successful."
This one does https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/10/russians-arrested-for-mining-bitcoin-at-nuclear-facility [theguardian.com]
Apparently it was bitcoin and no, they did not succeed.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday February 10 2018, @11:00PM (2 children)
It says "Bitcoin" in the headline, but that's not substantiated in the body of the Guardian article, which adds a little background but no additional details over this International Business Times story nor the original Russian-language Interfax.Ru [interfax.ru] story on which it was based.
If they found out what currency, I'd like to know how.
And while we are on that note, if you have supercomputers dedicated to a major national nuclear weapons program running a mining program and you do not get any coin mined, you must of a certainty be doing something wrong.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday February 10 2018, @11:51PM
https://cnnmoneytech.tumblr.com/post/51098009327/a-fun-bitcoin-statistic?iid=EL [tumblr.com]
I'm going to guess the bitcoin network has scaled even higher than supercomputers have scaled in the last five years.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 11 2018, @02:40AM
Probably what they did wrong was get caught before they got seriously cranking.