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Former Fed Employee Fined $5,000 For Installing Bitcoin Software On Server (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A former Federal Reserve employee was sentenced Friday to 12 months probation and a $5,000 fine after pleading guilty in October to installing unauthorized software on a computer server at the U.S. central bank. Nicholas Berthaume, who as a communications analyst had access to computer servers at the Fed's Board of Governors in Washington, installed software that connected to an online bitcoin network in order to earn units of the digital currency, according to a statement Monday from the central bank's Office of Inspector General. Berthaume also "modified certain security safeguards so that he could remotely access the server from home," the statement said. When confronted, he tried to cover up his actions by deleting the software; eventually he was fired and admitted guilt, the office said. His actions didn't result in the loss of any Fed information, and the board has enhanced security since the incident, the internal watchdog said. The story was first reported by The Wall Street Journal (Warning: source may be paywalled).
Why bother? It is not like those servers can compete with ASIC mining anyway...
You may not create money! What do you think this is the federal reserve bank or something?
Reminds me of that guy who got sacked a while back for loading SETI at Home on a bunch of servers at his work.
Is it really that hard to remember that the computers at your employer's company are not yours?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Shitty secutity at it's finnest!
He got caught.
How ironic!....looking for MONEY(bit coin), by using the federal reserve bank computer server. Love it!
Good thing we didn't live in this environment at the "dawn of networked computing" in the 80's. Most of the muds ran at the behest of unix sys-admins at Universities... under the radar of the University Dept Heads in most cases.
Admin rights to a server?
You don't need admin privileges to mine bitcoins. A normal user login is enough.
Tru firewall and proxy? Seriously?
Even a web browser can do that. Where I work, this many people are unable to access outside servers: 0.
I looked into it out of curiosity about a year ago and concluded that I could make somewhere around $5 - $15 a month, while spending more on power. It long stopped being worth mining with common hardware.
Of course using someone else's equipment you don't have that downside, but those consequences far outweigh whatever pocket cash he made from it, unless it was installed on an entire cluster.
Hillary new the first rule: _Never admit to nothin._
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
in small businesses and even medium sized enterprises where a small number of admins are gods (no regular outside audits) or security is weak to non-existent. I wouldn't be shocked if billion in electricity was being siphoned off like this illegally annually.
Bitcoin, the currency of criminality
Na, that is USD.
Sure, some people use bitcoin in their "criminal empire" but that is a mere pittance compared to normal fiat cash.
He was a Communications Analyst, so I'm not at all surprised that he had access to the servers. But, again, while the eeeevil hacker getting access to your computer(s) is the thing that makes the news, most problems occur because of some employee, disgruntled or not, pulls something like this simply because they can.
Is there anyone who would seriously buy those bullshit bitsy shekels?
100% Correct. Until drug dealers on the street start accepting Bitcoin for purchases, Its criminality hides in the shadow of the current USD. Im pretty sure you can buy drugs in almost any country on this planet with US Currency.
Today's current exchange rate is 5.41 coins for $5000.00.
The article doesn't say how long he had the system running. But if it had any serious processing power, and he got 1 coin per month for six months? That's breaking even.
If he managed to do it longer than six months, then that's a profit, especially since he didn't tie up too much time in court trying to plead not guilty.
I would say, "Not bad!", but we don't know how long he was running the software. And he's not likely to say, either.
[End Of Line]
Are you kidding? I could be independently wealthy now had I bought bitcoins back when they were worth pennies. I'd buy Amazon gift cards with bitcoins and then sell the cards for cash.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Let's try that again shall we?
1) They haven't found any evidence of data being lost
2) They lost a lot of data but prefer not to admit it....
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!
I suspect H actually didn't know. Most of, perhaps all, of the "problem emails" were sent TO her by others. She wouldn't just automatically know; should she keep asking for all 40,000 sent? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? 40,000 fricken times.
It shouldn't be her job to vet them anyhow, a low-level grunt could vet them for say 1/5 the cost. As far as the "(c)" markings, those are commonly used for many different things.
Example:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca....
Table-ized A.I.
I don't think somebody should outright be fired for something like this. Fined and suspended for a few months is sufficient. People make mistakes and deserve a second chance, barring something extreme. Those punished are usually more careful than average anyhow. They are probably less likely to make more such mistakes than their replacement.
If he/she does something stupid a second time, THEN boot 'em.
Table-ized A.I.
can he pay the fine with bitcoins ?!?
How does this work?
Was the employee first fined, then put on probation, then eventually fired?!
Is the employee fired after the 12 months probation?!
Did the (sentencing) entity change their minds on this?
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Wrong.
I don't know why they are not, other than the "intention" bottleneck would keep coming up over and over. They were the originators of putting most the wrong info on the unclassified systems (regular generic office email) to begin with.
Table-ized A.I.