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posted by martyb on Saturday February 10 2018, @09:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the in-post-Soviet-Russia-... dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 11 2018, @12:16AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 11 2018, @12:16AM (#636181)

    One of the top folding@home members for awhile was a large compute cluster from their employer. "For burn in" for 6 months.

    In this case there is money involved. Of course people are doing this. People will cheat for what amounts to basically internet points.

  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday February 11 2018, @01:15AM

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday February 11 2018, @01:15AM (#636196) Journal

    Was the system sitting idle for long periods of time?
    How long would they have gotten away with this were it not for this:

    supposed to be isolated; they are kept disconnected from the internet in order to prevent any outside intrusion or hacking efforts.

    Every super computer I've read about is booked solid for years on end. I can see a single purpose machine not connected to the net might run out of work from time to time.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.