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Russian Nuclear Scientists Arrested For 'Bitcoin Mining Plot' (bbc.com)
Russian security officers have arrested several scientists working at a top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility for allegedly mining crypto-currencies, BBC reported Friday, citing local media. From the report: The suspects had tried to use one of Russia's most powerful supercomputers to mine Bitcoins, media reports say. The Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov, western Russia, is a restricted area.
The centre's press service said: "There has been an unsanctioned attempt to use computer facilities for private purposes including so-called mining." The supercomputer was not supposed to be connected to the internet -- to prevent intrusion -- and once the scientists attempted to do so, the nuclear centre's security department was alerted. They were handed over to the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian news service Mash says. "As far as we are aware, a criminal case has been launched against them," the press service told Interfax news agency.
Good thing this facility was Top Secret. I would hate to hear about what goes on inside.
They will end up mining!
"They were handed over to the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian news service Mash says."
I knew it!!! MsMash is a Russian spy too!!!!
Wouldn't such a plot be called a 'claim'?
They were probably told to fund their own operation. My new ICO is called CoinBux!
They were going to call theirs GlowCoin
What would the hash rate be of a supercomputer mining Bitcoin?
Even if they'd got their operation up and running, neighboring towns would grow suspicious as all of their lights dimmed at the same time.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That kills use of the cliche, "It doesn't take a nuclear scientist..."
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The thing about Canucks is: they're smart enough to not get caught!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
they were arrested for connecting a top secret supercomputer to the internet. that is going to get you in trouble whether you're mining bitcoin or sharing cat memes.
They were probably costing more in electric use than they were making in cryptocurrency (most miners aren't actually mining bitcoin, they just get paid in bitcoin).
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Because there's a difference between a classified system and classified information - it's much easier to control a system than information. Hillary put classified information on a non-classified internet-connected system. There's no way to actively prevent someone from doing that, you can only monitor for it and clean up after it. For example, Donald Trump could spill classified information to the Russians in a meeting and OH WAIT
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
In more recent soviet days, as long as the scientists towed the party line they were treated pretty well, at least theoretically. Science was praised. Scientists were rewarded relatively well. Perhaps times have changed. This incident makes me wonder just how bad things are getting these days in Russia for scientists, economically. I would not be surprised if these guys were pretty poor off and decided to help themselves to some of the resources at their disposal. I'm just trying to understand what might have tempted these guys to use the super computer in this way. Unfortunately they appear to have brought the wrath of the state down on them.
One wonders how secret it can be if there are Getty Images of it.
That photo was taken at a museum. Either that or Russian nuclear production facilities have some very interesting decorative choices. ....
CBS news says (https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/which-countries-have-nukes/3/ ):
"Here, a nuclear museum staffer cleans the first Soviet nuclear bomb, tested in 1949, just in front of the country's first thermonuclear bomb."
CREDIT: Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images
Yep, image is of a museum.
Posting this anonymously, even though I'm pretty sure the statue of limitations is long past.
Many years ago I got a job for SGI on site at big customer. This was back when the Origin 2000 was the new hotness. This site had a whole O2k buildout (3 or 4 racks worth of compute cores, 32 R10k MIPS processors clocked at around 200Mhz all connected via these thick cable bundles into a hypercube topology IIRC) purely for benchmarking and compatibility testing. They were used only sporadically. This was also the time when the distributed.net RSA cracking challenge was running. So obviously I set up a process that would run distributed.net across all of the cores, but would also monitor for any access to the machine and shut the whole thing down, not so much because I was trying to hide it but because I didn't want to impact any tests other people wanted to run. I also made it so I had to start it manually after verifying that the machine was truly idle. The only problem was that the machine had LEDs that indicated CPU activity, and when the process was running they would be full up, but as soon as someone logged in to investigate they would be gone. Luckily nobody who worked there was the suspicious type.
After one long weekend I came back to discover that my aggregation machine (The O2k didn't talk directly to distributed.net servers, I ran a local server to cut down on the internet traffic) had suffered a drive failure and had been down for several days. I took the morning to get the aggregation server restarted and working. A couple of days later one of my friends mentioned that I was #3 for that day on the distributed.net statistics page. Oops.
Governments really hate when you use their equipment for private purposes. Especially if you are making money, making drugs, or...
Donald Trump could spill classified information to the Russians in a meeting and OH WAIT
You do understand that Trump can legally do that because all classified information is classified on authority delegated by president. He literally has the ultimate say here. So, the President can declassify anything at any time for any reason and had said information to anyone, legally. All classified information is kept under Executive Order 13526 which was enacted by Obama in 2009.
Now you may not think it's a good idea to disclose specific information, but the President has the legal authority to discuss classified information with anyone he chooses.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Yes it's a fun little factoid that he didn't illegally reveal classified information in the process of revealing above-top-secret information to an adversarial power while bragging about obstructing justice. And he didn't use emails either! Email security is serious business.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
LOL.. Way to let that partisan bias show... No sense in trying to hide it I guess, this is Slashdot after all...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Imagine if all the supercomputers in the world focused on cures instead.
Install BOINC and become part of the solution.