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NSF Bans Researcher for Mining Bitcoins

posted by n1 on Wednesday June 11 2014, @03:56AM   
from the not-for-profit dept.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Tim Hornyak reports that National Science Foundation (NSF) has banned a researcher for using supercomputer resources to generate bitcoin. According to the semiannual report to Congress by the NSF Office of Inspector General, the computationally intensive mining used about $150,000 worth of NSF-supported computer use at the two universities to generate bitcoins worth about $8,000 to $10,000 (PDF). The universities told the NSF that the work was unauthorized, reporting that the researcher accessed the computers remotely, even using a mirror site in Europe, possibly to conceal his identity. "The researcher's access to all NSF-funded supercomputer resources was terminated," the office wrote. "In response to our recommendation, NSF suspended the researcher government-wide."

The incident follows a similar case in February in which a researcher at Harvard University was caught using supercomputer resources to mine dogecoin. The researcher was barred from accessing the computer resources.

• ssdd ssdd (Score: 2) by keplr on Wednesday June 11 2014, @05:17AM

  by keplr (2104) on Wednesday June 11 2014, @05:17AM (#54022) Journal

  Misappropriating computer resources. It's basically the same thing as when I play solitaire on my work computer. These heathen scientists don't realize that every clock cycle is sacred!

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• Re:ssdd (Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Wednesday June 11 2014, @06:43AM

  by Tork (3914) on Wednesday June 11 2014, @06:43AM (#54036)

  "It's basically the same thing as when I play solitaire on my work computer." I don't think you were caught playing solitaire because your boss saw the power-bill.

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