SoylentNews

martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

Employees Connect Ukranian Nuclear Plant to the Internet to Mine Cryptocurrency [zdnet.com]:

According to authorities, the incident took place in July at the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant [wikipedia.org], located near the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk, in southern Ukraine.

It's unknown how the scheme was discovered, but on July 10 the SBU raided the nuclear power plant, from where it seized computers and equipment specifically built for mining cryptocurrency.

This equipment was found in the power plant's administration offices, and not on its industrial network.

Confiscated equipment included two metal cases containing basic computer parts, but with additional power supplies, coolers, and video cards. According to court documents [1 [court.gov.ua], 2 [court.gov.ua]], one case held six Radeon RX 470 GPU video cards, and the second five.

Further, the SBU also found and seized additional equipment[1 [court.gov.ua], 2 [court.gov.ua]] that looked like mining rigs in the building used as barracks by a military unit of the National Guard of Ukraine, tasked with guarding the power plant.

Several employees have been charged for their involvement in the scheme, but not yet arrested. It's unclear if any military staff was charged.

Officials believe the suspects attempted their scheme because of a recent spike in cryptocurrency trading prices, after a long period during which they fell.

Ukrainian news site UNIAN [unian.info] first reported the investigation.

“The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.” Thomas Macaulay [goodreads.com]

Original Submission