Russian nuclear scientists arrested for attempting to mine on a supercomputer

[Ginger_]

Source:

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-43003740

 

Quote

Russian security officers have arrested several scientists working at a top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility for allegedly mining crypto-currencies.

 

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.

This has to be one of funniest things I've read in awhile. I mean, what were they thinking to start with? I'm just gonna plug in this here ethernet cable, add a couple repos, and somehow not get caught by the it department that the freaking multi million dollar computer is now on the internet and mining. Oh yeah, and it's in a super secure hidden facility. 

 

Although I would be interested to see what mines best and at what hash rate. 

[ItsMitch]

what fucking idiots lmao

[Nup]

Hahah. That’s awesome, what a way to go. I mean I could really see the temptation but they must have some headache over it now. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Name Taken said:

Millions of dollars worth of CPU or GPU won't match an ASIC miner

What if he tried to mine the national currency of ethereum? Or any other asic resistant coins.

[Eduard the weeb]

Thy may be scientist but that aren't smart tech wise

[Eduard the weeb]

1 minute ago, Almostbauws said:

What if he tried to mine the national currency of ethereum? Or any other asic resistant coins.

wouldn't matter its a super computer and meant to be off the net at all times to prevent spying by other governments and that was a strict violation of that rule

[Ginger_]

1 minute ago, Name Taken said:

Maybe Monero but that's dominated by botnets already.

It's still profitable, and depending on what hardware built this supercomputer could be super profitable. 

[NTDaws]

Top 10 Dumbest Scientists in the world. Seriously how dumb are you to mine Crypto Currency on a High Security Computer. What do you believe in a flying spaghetti monster!

[Max_Settings]

That hash rate though

[samcool55]

Well at least nothing blew up...

[aezakmi]

Quote

The suspects had tried to use one of Russia's most powerful supercomputers to mine Bitcoins

but can it run Assassin's Creed: Origins?

[Catsrules]

I would be tempted to do this, not for the money but to just see what kind of hash rate it would get.
 

 

[Bananasplit_00]

one of my teachers got to be the maintnance guy of a HUGE server bunker around where i live and just started mining, he was one of the biggest miners in the world in whatever alt coin that was and just dumped it all in his wallet. thousands of graphics cards, processor cores and so on mining away and all that went right into his wallet lol

[Catsrules]

18 minutes ago, Name Taken said:

Millions of dollars worth of CPU or GPU won't match an ASIC miner.

Not necessarily, lots of crypto-currencies are ASIC resistant, so they can only be mined from a GPU or CPU.  Despite what the the artificial said I doubt they were mining bitcoin specifically.  More likely there were mining an ASIC resistant coin.

 

[MikeSK]

I wonder if North Korea's super computers for ballistic missile and nuclear weapons has been side lined to crypto currency mine to support these projects in the future.  

[Taf the Ghost]

This sounds like 5 drinks too many on a Friday evening after work.

[Tech_Dreamer]

"Scientists"

[Energycore]

47 minutes ago, Eduard the weeb said:

Thy may be scientist but that aren't smart tech wise

They're smart tech wise, they're just not very astute

[toratabu]

Is mining with supercomputer really more efficient than an ASIC?

curious about hashrate so i can plug into this profit calculator

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/bitcoin/mining_calculator

[MikeSK]

If you are an employee and mining crypto on the supercomputer you are not paying for, if it generates a little, the employee comes out ahead despite the risk and expense to others, which includes Russian Tax payers.

[Master Disaster]

I'm interested in knowing how the hell he managed to do it at all

 

1) Super computer designed for running a nuclear facility, not exactly going to be running Ubuntu.

 

2) Super computer designed to never connect to the internet so very likely to have no TCP/IP stack present in the kernel at all.

 

3) Super computer running a nuclear facility and they're telling us the dude was just able to take it offline and take control of its processors?

 

This story has more holes than a mobsters car, I wonder if the scientists weren't doing something a little more shady and this is just a believable cover story.

[Ginger_]

20 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I'm interested in knowing how the hell he managed to do it at all

 

1) Super computer designed for running a nuclear facility, not exactly going to be running Ubuntu.

 

2) Super computer designed to never connect to the internet so very likely to have no TCP/IP stack present in the kernel at all.

 

3) Super computer running a nuclear facility and they're telling us the dude was just able to take it offline and take control of its processors?

 

This story has more holes than a mobsters car, I wonder if the scientists weren't doing something a little more shady and this is just a believable cover story.

I thought about that too, and apparently most run Linux, and are variously stripped out and added on. With that it wouldn't be too hard to add the right protocols to connect to the internet, and who knows how far they got at achieving mining off of it, from the art ie it sounds like they were caught shortly after they connected to the internet. It does seem like they would have to add to any miner program to actually use all of the distributed cores so I doubt they actually did any mining, although really it depends on the OS the computer is running

 

https://www.google.com/amp/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/almost-all-the-worlds-fastest-supercomputers-run-linux/

[ivan134]

2 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I'm interested in knowing how the hell he managed to do it at all

 

1) Super computer designed for running a nuclear facility, not exactly going to be running Ubuntu.

 

2) Super computer designed to never connect to the internet so very likely to have no TCP/IP stack present in the kernel at all.

 

3) Super computer running a nuclear facility and they're telling us the dude was just able to take it offline and take control of its processors?

 

This story has more holes than a mobsters car, I wonder if the scientists weren't doing something a little more shady and this is just a believable cover story.

Yea, this story sounds way too stupid to be true. This is coming out of Russia govt approved media so I'd take it with a grain of salt.

[EnergyEclipse]

But can it run the Final Fantasy XV?

[Doobeedoo]

Hah mine them all fast