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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: 3, Informative) by turgid on Saturday February 10 2018, @11:10PM (2 children)
Dude, a $200 Nvidia graphics card has more computing power than your SGI/MIPS/Irix cluster from 1997.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday February 10 2018, @11:50PM (1 child)
Yeah, but what about a cluster from 2005? But you're right, it is pretty hilarious how underpowered those old machines are by today's standards.
By the way, I loved the hardware simplicity of the tower models like Octanes and O2s but fucking hated the Indys. Disassembling Indys was a huge unnecessarily difficult bitch considering the pizza box configuration. Now I know how Volvo and Audi mechanics feel.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday February 11 2018, @12:06PM
Xeon or itanic?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].