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requerdanos [soylentnews.org] writes:

Well, we've seen past stories on viruses co-opting Raspberry Pi units [soylentnews.org] to mine cryptocurrency, and websites mining a few coins [soylentnews.org] on their viewers' systems, but it took some crafty boffins in Russia to really give the issue some scale. International Business Times [ibtimes.com] 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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