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NSF Researcher Suspended For Mining Bitcoin
PvtVoid (1252388) writes "In the semiannual report to Congress by the NSF Office of Inspector General, the organization said it received reports of a researcher who was using NSF-funded supercomputers at two universities to mine Bitcoin. The computationally intensive mining took up about $150,000 worth of NSF-supported computer use at the two universities to generate bitcoins worth about $8,000 to $10,000, according to the report. It did not name the researcher or the universities."
This is pretty much at the lowest of the low category, Someone who takes up taxpayer funded computer time to mine Bitcoin, should essentially be barred for life form the facility... and that's for starters.
Is that figure just based on some arbitrary appraisal of the the machine's time or what?
but since that ship has sailed,
wasn't this bound to happen once the electricity costs of bitmining begun to damage profitability? Perhaps even before the Peak Coin event, using electricity and the resources of others was attractive to a certain type of miner...
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
How could someone smart enough to be paid to work on supercomputers be stupid enough to think that the admins won't notice someone submitting 'mpirun -np 1024 mine_bitcoins.exe' or whatever equivalent this dirtbag did?
There was a reason I LOLed when my clueless parents asked me if I could run a bitcoin miner on our local supercomputer resources.
It's based on the rate that the owning entity (typically a university or the DoE) charges for time on it, which is (at least in theory) correlated with the machine's electric, AC (i.e. more electric) and ISP bills, the hardware manufacturer service and support contracts, and the price of the highly paid technicians and sysadmins who keep it working. All of these are nontrivial.
The NSA and defense contractors go through that kind of waste in milliseconds.
I used to do funded networking work and this is one of the *first* things I thought when I heard about BTC...a friend who is a router R&D now and I talked all about it of course...never actually **did it**
I would have definitely put a miner bot in a broom closet next to a computer lab in a freshmen dorm or something...nowhere near our program's stuff, for alot of reasons
we just talked though...if my friend had took the time he'd be litterally rich right now...at least 6 figures b/c we were in school from 2008-2010
now, i sure hope they don't "throw the book at them"...I hope they don't get felonies unless unavoidable and either way no prison time...get them on a hardcore probation for 5 years....they can make your life hell now w/ electronic monitoring...let's keep these people out of prison if possible
Thank you Dave Raggett
NO. This man is a hero for disrupting those rigged climate simulations confirming AGW. He wasn't in it for the money per se, it's just that mining bitcoin was simply the best way to do it. Plus, mining bitcoin had the added social benefit of further cracking the Rothschild edifice. Power to the people!
I suspect you're joking but either way i hope they don't tag them w/ felonies just for this...the DA will surely pull some ridiculous damages figure but there's no reason to cripple good engineers forever w/ a felony for this
Thank you Dave Raggett
He spent $150,000 to make $10,000. What profit?
Your tax dollars at work...
In this economy, I would be surprised if they don't. There is a push for DAs to throw the book at even the smallest charges by the private prison lobby, and if the DA doesn't tag felonies, he or she will be out of a job, replaced by one that will.
This is a felony. It's fraud and theft. Good engineers don't get fired for stealing 10% or less of what good engineers in the prime of their careers are making.
He didn't download a movie. He didn't copy that floppy. He appropriated a taxpayer resource to line his pockets.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
He'll make it up in volume.
I hope they don't get felonies unless unavoidable and either way no prison time...get them on a hardcore probation for 5 years....they can make your life hell now w/ electronic monitoring...let's keep these people out of prison if possible
~$150,000 worth of computer time/resources was stolen. This isn't a 'whoops, my bad': the researcher also made deliberate efforts to conceal his/her activity, according to the article.
Imagine if a bank employee had just taken an equivalent out of the universities' accounts and spent it. Would that not be enough for a felony, in your opinion?
And then imagine if he used that $8000 to buy a computer and an internet connection and downloaded a few pirated songs doing literally $trillions in damage.
My estimates are that he could easily have downloaded enough pirated content with that much internet to cause enough damage to bankrupt the entire world.
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
He spent $150,000 of other people's money to make $10,000 for himself. Pure profit. Its like congress setting their own salary: its free money.
Why is "mining for bitcoins" worth anything? Does the mining do anything like help SETI or share processing to crunch real world stuff?
If it has an intrinsic value, then I'd support helping the guy in the OP, but if it's seriously just a ponzi scheme - then I'd support law enforcement on taking it down.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Supercomputers are so last year. Do you even ASIC, bro?
Yeah, there is a reason to cripple a "good"* engineer forever with a felony for this - he committed a bloody felony.
*Presuming he's "good", something neither you nor I know... but misuse of someone else's property indicates that he has significant ethics problems, which argues against him being "good".
This guy is a piece of crap. He wasted so much taxpayer money with this little scheme, and for what? Less than 10% of the money actually spent. He belongs up there with the government officials that throw Gatsby-esque parties on someone else's dime.
This wouldn't even be news if it was the other way round, if he wrote an efficient algorithm and spent $10,000 to make $150,000. "Lets keep this one between us shall we. Which office do you want? Tenure? Sure, why not...". Lesson learned: make profit.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
I remember a decade ago when we'd install the SETI@home screensaver on every computer we could get our hands on. (Putting it on a Power Mac G5 and setting the machine to not go to sleep bumped my electric bill at home up 50% for a couple months.) I guess the difference here is that a profit is being made.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Give them a warning, put a clause in the terms of use. Let everyone agree about it.
So what if instead he was "human-mining" huntercoin (bitcoin spinoff that lets you mine coins by playing a game) on his desktop? Lets say he was just playing a normal game? How much is the supercomputer aspect of this important vs the profit aspect?
This guy spent $150K of other people's money to make $10K for himself.
Given the low takings in relation to salery for someone in such a position, I suspect it may have been motivated as much by bragging rights or enthusiasm for bitcoin as direct profits. Sometimes you just want to impress people with your mining rig.
Minor thing, but it's more likely a scientist than an engineer.
I've walked through American Express' server farm (thus the AC) and saw the stupid Linux screen-savers, so they could be earning the idiotic BitCoin "loser-award for power consumption" award...
it's **not analogous**
to answer your question (even though your analogy is hilariously tilted)...NO...IF IT IS AVOIDABLE
you assholes want to pass out felonies like candy...it's BS
Thank you Dave Raggett
boo fsking hoo
when the 1000s of asshats who caused the financial crisis are held accountable...all of them...THEN...your question would be valid
you're a pedantic shit
Thank you Dave Raggett
I'm going to assume you mean your personal machines.
Installing SETI@home or any other such software on hardware you don't own and aren't paying for is just as reprehensible as mining for Magic Internet Money.
I suspect the dude's going to file for moral bankruptcy, so he doesn't have to cough up the feels to his debtors.
you're an idiot
look at you, using italics to make your point
he committed a **FELONY**
you're just arguing for a word b/c you're a social darwinist who gets off on other's suffering
when the US criminal justice system punishes the 2008 financial crisis and LIBOR perpetrators I'll entertain teh notion of this being a serious crime, even though I don't see it that way
people stealing from a bank...yes criminal but not **nearly** as harmful to society as a BANK stealing a HOME from a FAMILY
fsking idiot
Thank you Dave Raggett
He spent 150k of someone else's money to make 10k for himself... Personally he spent 0 to make 10k, plenty of profit.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
He stole $150k to make $10k profit.
First what-ifs are useless because they didn't happen.
Second it is not a profit issue. It is about stealing time that could be used for real research. Supercomputer time is a scarce resource and he misused it.
I agree that the perpetrators of the 2008 financial crisis and LIBOR scandal ought to be severely punished for all the human misery they caused, and personally I would be comfortable with sentences including capital punishment.
But that is that, and this is this. Are you seriously advocating that lesser crimes should be forgiven if there are bigger fish to fry? That people who misuse $150,000 of public funds to line their own pockets with $8,000-10,000 should get away with it because others have stolen millions/billions?
Quite frankly I don't see why it should be an either or proposition. Why not go after all of them?
I will also add that from the report, the miner doesn't sound like an angel worth defending at all :-
Bit convenient ain't it, pushing all the blame to the police? It's their job to keep politicians clean, not your problem? What about the voters who keep electing the same dirty officials into office term after term? Not their fault, I'm sure.
Politicians elect their buddies to become police commissioners who then control the pay, promotions and advancement prospects of cops on the force. Cops are regular joes who have families to feed, mortgages to pay, retirement funds to worry about.
Do you know what happens to clean cops who try to expose corruption? They get shot at. Watch the movie "Serpico" for the gory details. Think about what you are asking them to sacrifice, and what you have done before you mouth off about cowardice.
And why shouldn't an office worker embezzling from an employer be subject to criminal penalties? What is your distinction between a civil and criminal matter?
Proportionality and criminal intent. In the case of the bitcoin miner, he stole the use of $150,000 worth of computer resources to make $8,000-$10,000 for himself. Most people will agree that these are not small sums and should be treated seriously, hence criminal penalties are due. In the example of the parent post of an office worker making long duration international calls to family paid by his employer, the sums are likely in the small hundreds at most and there was no intention to make money for himself.
You seem to be advocating a strict interpretation of the law, where all crimes are judged by the book. Most people would have a problem with that and instinctively understand that criminality is not a black or white matter. A child who steals a piece of gum should be treated differently from a hobo who steals bread to fill his stomach from a billionaire who steals from his employees' retirement fund, although technically all three acts are theft.
It seems it is not really a matter of "misusing someone else's property" that upsets you, rather it is misusing a scarce resource. Also, at VA hospitals it is a felony to use the email system to invite people to a birthday party.
The amount of power supercomptuers take is IMMENSE. Like let's say he was using Stampede, the supercomputer at University of Texas. That thing draws 3 MEGAWATTS when fully spooled up. That is just what it draws, not what its cooling system takes, which could easily be another half a megawatt. Now we dunno what they pay for electricity precisely, but looking at industrial rates in Texas with the PUC it runs somewhere around the realm of $73/MWh. So running this thing for just one hour spun up costs $250ish. Just the raw power cost is a lot.
Now I'll grant you, it uses some of that at idle. However even if all the systems just drop to idle power, and it doesn't shut down unused nodes, it'll still easily be 10% of that based on what our Dell servers use (the system uses a bunch of Dell servers with Sandy Bridge Xeons in them).
So never mind CPU time costs, maintenance, wear, other research getting delayed, etc, which is all very real, pure power usage is a lot for a big supercomputer.
Power costs is something many coin miners never seem to factor in. They'll crow on about their "profits" but if they deduct anything, it is just hardware costs. They don't seem to bother to analyze how much power their computers are using to do the mining, and then further how much power is being used to cool those computers, if applicable.
Because it costs a non-trivial amount of real resources to "produce". Dollars cost little and less to make and move. Even physical dollars don't take that much, and most dollars are just accounting entries in computers. So there isn't much resources spent on shuffling them around, no more than any of the myriads of other data we shuffle around.
However bitcoins require energy, lots of it and an ever increasing amount, to "mine". So creating them, and moving them around needs energy to be spent playing math games with no benefit. However it still needs real resources to generate the power to do it. It is an extremely wasteful idea, particularly if it were ever scaled up to the massive worldwide economic scale the BTC proponents want (it can't scale that high for a lot of reasons, but then logic isn't their strong suit).
Good job there mate, caught wrong in your assumptions and unable to refute the facts - you resort to personal attacks and blowing smoke.
I do most of my research on supercomputers. "Servcie Units" (SU's) are the currency on these machines. They are usually either node hours or core hours. Typical allocations are in the hundreds of thousands to millions of SUs.
I don't know what formula they used to come up with a dollar value. It would be nice to know, however, as I am in academia where real dollar grants get all the attention since they come with that sweet overhead. I'm sure my dean would appreciate the symbolism of getting the college overhead in SU's (and converting them to dollars).
But seriously, these machines are up 24/7 (unless down for hardware fault or maintenance) and while I'm sure they draw more current when the CPU is pegged if this guy was mining bitcoins with his allocation then really all he did was go against the terms of his allocation. Those SUs would have either been wasted or used up anyway. But you just don't mine bitcoin on federal supercomputers, man. Dick move.
I hope he at least used GPU accelerators with his code, the bastard.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
There must have been a ton of the that going on, but I suppose it was only management doing it so that is OK
Now if he was doing research into bitcoin and the mining of bitcoins, there might be a reason for him to have done that.
"Research into bitcoin"? Seriously? They were mining bitcoins and doing so at taxpayer expense. What legitimate "research" could they possibly have been doing?
the DA will surely pull some ridiculous damages figure but there's no reason to cripple good engineers forever w/ a felony for this
If it was indeed a crime then after due process takes its course then they absolutely do deserve to be tagged with a felony. There are plenty of engineers who are corrupt just like any other profession. If they committed a crime then they deserve the punishment. While innocent until proven guilty and all that, if they did what it appears then the absolutely deserve to go to jail and pay restitution.
when the 1000s of asshats who caused the financial crisis are held accountable...all of them...THEN...your question would be valid
Two wrongs don't make a right. Just because the scumbags in the financial world haven't been brought to account doesn't excuse what this guy (allegedly) did. If he committed a crime and it can be proven in an appropriate court of law then he deserves to be punished. We don't excuse people just because there are other criminals doing worse things.
1. you don't know if he actually wasted anything (the computers could have been idle otherwise)
Not relevant. Even if the computer was idle that doesn't give him the right to utilize it for his own enrichment. Furthermore even an idle computer costs money to operate and maintain, so if he did what he is accused of then it was certainly theft on some level.
2. perhaps he intended to donate the money, or he needed it to help a relative, etc.; you just don't know anything about the situation.
You're going to use a Robin Hood defense? You don't get permission to steal things just because you "intend" to donate the money to someone needy. I could point out that you don't know anything about the situation either. You have no evidence that altruistic motives were at work here. But it doesn't matter. Based on the available information it appears that this person tried to use a computer to enrich themselves or others unjustly at the expense of others. That is a crime regardless of intent. I cannot walk into Walmart and steal something just because I intend to give it away to someone needy.
$150k counts as a lot of electricity. Even at the current difficulty, I find it hard to believe someone could have used that much power to mine only $8k worth of BTC.
Electricity is just one of the costs involved and probably not even close to the biggest one. You have to consider the cost of the computers and other gear amortized across usage, rent/facility cost, support infrastructure, staff, insurance, maintenance, and more. Furthermore you have to consider the opportunity cost if this guy used the system when it could have been put to other more productive use. Opportunity cost is probably where much of the $150K comes from. It was the price they could have sold the computer time for. I run a very small manufacturing company and it costs us around $60K per month just to keep the doors open even if we never produce a single product. The $150K number doesn't mean much out of context but it wouldn't be hard for me to believe a number in the tens of thousands of dollars.
(disclosure I'm an accountant)
I think it should be a civil matter..... bill the researcher for the computer time intentionally misappropriated for non-work-related activities
Restitution is certainly warranted but whether it is a civil or criminal matter depends on the laws and whether he broke any. The fact that he took pains to hide his identity seems to indicate awareness that what he was doing was wrong. If the dollar amount of what he took is high enough then it becomes a criminal matter. If one of my employees stole company resources I would certainly fire them and seek restitution and if it was more than a pad of post-it-notes I'd probably call the police as well.
The abuse of the supercomputer is an extreme case. But there are other less clear-cut areas. For instance:
- What if I bring my own computer to the university and use their electricity to generate bitcoins?
- What if I bring university-owned equipment (that I have control over) home and use it to mine bitcoins on my electricity?
In either case, something that doesn’t really belong to me (even if I’m in charge of it and have the right to relocate) is being used for profit in a way that is (a) most likely against policy, and (b) not ethical in the first place.
The latter category is the really tempting one. Nobody would catch me, because all the network traffic and electricty usage is at my own home. Any impact on the longevity of the equiment is moot because it would probably go obsolete long before it suffered hardware failure. And of course, I can claim that I’m taking it home for official purposes (nobody would question me anyhow). This is one of those cases where you have to let your sense of right and wrong take precedence over the fact that you're clever enoug to not get caught.
It's at the bottom of page 29 of the report (page 30 of the PDF).
Just FYI
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Of course there is a reason. You fuck other people around in the workplace for your own profit and you should get penalised as if you were stealing their equipment and selling it.
I was actually at one of these supercomputer facilities a day or two after it happened and found out then. Too bad they didn't release more information so I could talk about it. :-( Someone in our group amusingly noted though that it was probably the first time that supercomputers had been used to directly make money. *snicker*
To bypas the MIT firewall. And was arrested with some serious charges.
Sounds like how Bill Gates got kicked out of Harvard for using government funded computing resources to launch his company.
Spending other people money - Check
Getting a kickback for doing so - Check
Little to no accountability - Check
He would do great in DC
Personal profit so more like charging people to use the employers phone system and pocketing the cash while the employer pays the bill.
But on the bright side it might just be the best use of 'Climate Models' to actually do something useful instead of churn out ridiculous 'climate' predictions, er forecasts, er projections, er scenarios er well ... it's all in the numbers.
Way to go NSF.
More importantly, he did it very poorly. Seriously, $100k of computer time for a $10k profit? Buttcoin is not economically viable to produce.
Wasting federal money to get his fix.
I'm glad the public is quickly catching on to the fact that Bitcoin is the currency of choice for criminals and drug addicts.
He appropriated a taxpayer resource to line his pockets.
So basically, he's the very model of a good capitalist, sharing the costs and keeping the profits. Why should he be punished for his entrepreneurship? Why do you hate freedom so much?
Bald eagles cry tears of blood, red like the flag of Soviet Union, over your post.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
to do something stupid to screw everyone. I wonder if all our data production codes will have to go through some audit in the near future. Considering how these codes are often written ("domain science" beginning graduate students) and supported, it will be a disaster.
This the scientific equivalent of a heisman quarterback stealing $25 of crab legs from the grocery store.
lose != loose
He keeps his bitcoins and is charged 150K as any other customer would be. He is also fired.
.
what was the task priority on the machines? If normal or below (hopefully) then no big deal.. also, what other work was prevented?
.
in my original comments I said what he did was a crime and should be punished
I said he should be punished
i said it was criminal
punishment warranted
its a crime
it was in my original comment
Thank you Dave Raggett
no...NO>>>NNNOOO
I ***NEVER*** said "it's not a crime"
of course he should be punished...but not a felony and not prison
stop putting words in my mouth
Thank you Dave Raggett
again, you're purposefully misunderstanding
you know full well that I objected to the notion of "throwing the book" at this guy
NOWHERE DID I SAY HE SHOULD NOT BE PUNISHED
I said the punishment should allow him to keep his career
**and that to complain that my solution is a "light sentence" is wrong, b/c of the hypocricy over prosecution the financial crisis**
you people are bloodthirsty social darwinists who love to find something wrong with others
your problem is schaudenfreud...that's where you're at here...your taking joy in doling out punishment
Thank you Dave Raggett
This is obviously a troll post, but I feel like pointing out that even Ayn Rand who's basically the poster child for taking pro capitalist philosophy further than it's logical conclusion uses exactly this as sort of behavior as the cause of the downfall of the world economy in the novel Atlas Shrugged.
Hell probably a good 50% of Francisco d'Anconia's rants are about how failing business getting the government to prop them up with laws and taxes that kill their competition and force people to buy from them, is stupid and doomed to failure.
Anyone who tells you socializing rick/losses and privatizing profits is capitalism is lying (or is a gullible idiot who's been lied to). It's actually a degenerate form of socialism (similar to what ran the Soviet union into the ground).
Litecoin and Dogecoin are both Scrypt based. All cryptocurrencies support scripts.
Anyone who tells you socializing rick/losses and privatizing profits is capitalism is lying (or is a gullible idiot who's been lied to). It's actually a degenerate form of socialism (similar to what ran the Soviet union into the ground).
It's actually existing capitalism, as in how it actually works, not some unicorns shitting rainbows ideal
right...love how you have a login but post as AC when you troll
if you can't post it logged-in, then you shouldn't post it
i'm not "whining"...see, you got picked on too much as a child and have a skewed idea of what "whining" is...
when a test or system is unfair or unbalanced then the **ONLY RIGHT THING TO DO** is speak out and act to **FIX THINGS**
speaking out to fix things and conctradict idiots is not "whining"
when the bullies called you a "whiner" they were really exploiting your lack of self-agency
speaking out in the moment is "sticking up for yourself".....saying to others after the fact how unfair things are when you consistently refuse to "stick up for yourself" is "whining"
Thank you Dave Raggett
haha well I watch it too, in spite of my good taste
thanks for taking my harsh language in stride...glad you agree b/c this really is a problem and we all need to do our part, even if it's just a few posts online
Thank you Dave Raggett
No, he would've be the model of a good capitalist if he staked his own money and time on it.
Supercomputers are generally used to cure disease, by discovering new drugs and new targets for drugs, to catch new drug-side-effects before they happen, to optimize away side-effects from existing classes of drugs, etc. To name a few of the projects that I've personally seen.
Supercomputing literally saves lives.
That's not how supercomputers work. You get exclusive control of N CPUs (and their RAM) until your script ends. You can't "fire up something in the background", there is no "nice". (Well, there is "nice" but it's only meaningful between your own threads, since you have exclusive control of the machine.)
The university lets people (students) bring their own computers, plug them in at the student union/ mess hall, and check facebook. I think if you brought your own laptop and mined bitcoin all day, it would not be a problem. If you carted in a full rack, there might be issues.
#2 means depriving someone else of the opportunity to use that device. (during that time-period.)
You are really going out of your way to justify making money at the expense of other suckers that didn't see it coming. I know that some people see it as "the American way", but that is just so that they can wrap that turd up in a flag and feel that it is OK to take advantage of others. :(
Sadly we are learning more about the faults or secret desires of other posters than about the actual topic
Do you guys have any statistics on how much of Slashdot's readership is not from the US? Just curious..