Russian Scientists Arrested For Cryptomining With Supercomputer

[kcarbotte]

Interfax, a Russian news agency, reported that authorities apprehended multiple employees of a Russian nuclear facility following an attempt to use a supercomputer to mine cryptocurrency.

Russian Scientists Arrested For Cryptomining With Supercomputer : Read more

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Every government partakes in this mining craze , not just Russians.

 

[vern72]

Now that's "Living the Dream"! I wonder how many coins they got.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Why not it was their part time job...LOL

 

[Uilleam]

I work at a place where they get government orders for servers with around 8 video cards or so all the time. Your tax dollars at work...

 

[bit_user]

I work at a place where they get government orders for servers with around 8 video cards or so all the time. Your tax dollars at work...

Right. The only thing those could be used for is mining. puh-lease.

At my (non-government) job, we use multi-GPU setups for machine learning and video transcoding.

The traditional (and most likely government use) of multi-GPU would probably be things like running simulations, brute-force code cracking, speech recognition, video analytics, etc. The only case where governments are probably doing anything with cryptocurrencies is tracing illicit transactions through the blockchain, in pursuit of criminals and terrorists.

Cryptocurrencies are getting so much press, it's like people forget all the other GPU-compute applications out there. In fact, I suspect AI is probably a close second in non-gaming applications driving demand for GPUs, after cryptocoins.

 

[Uilleam]

I never said they used them specifically for mining and only mining. I know for a fact where I live some local government offices order systems that are gaming computers just to run Excel. Either they are mining are playing games at work. The guy that orders these computers asks us to break up the order in smaller invoices so it doesn't raise any flag at the office. He never said that but it was obvious what he was doing. It's just more government waste, abuse and overspending. I have nothing to do with the builds or invoicing. I do repairs.

I know where these computers are going and what they are doing. I can't disclose who we sell them to specifically. Some are medical, military and educational institutions.

 

[Saga Lout]

I'd tell them to keep up the good work. While they're doing that they're leaving the rest of us alone.

 

[popatim]

Russia will make them the head of the SuperComputing Mining Dept once they realize how much money it was making them... or shoot them and put someone's nephew in charge. LoL

 

[bit_user]

I never said they used them specifically for mining and only mining. I know for a fact where I live some local government offices order systems that are gaming computers just to run Excel.

That's unfortunate. So, these are for local government (i.e. city/state)?

The guy that orders these computers asks us to break up the order in smaller invoices so it doesn't raise any flag at the office.

Not saying this is the reason, but sometimes orders get broken up because purchases above a certain dollar amount need approval at a higher level or need to go through a competitive bidding process and people just don't want to deal with any of that.

He never said that but it was obvious what he was doing. It's just more government waste, abuse and overspending. I have nothing to do with the builds or invoicing. I do repairs.

I know where these computers are going and what they are doing. I can't disclose who we sell them to specifically. Some are medical, military and educational institutions.

After so many years of budget cutting (does anyone remember the "sequester"?), most government agencies don't have enough budget to even think of fulfilling their mandate. This makes me quite skeptical, but I guess things might be different under the current administration that's not had a great track record of running things very well.

 

[bit_user]

Russia will make them the head of the SuperComputing Mining Dept once they realize how much money it was making them... or shoot them and put someone's nephew in charge. LoL

For a big country, there's not enough money to be made in crypto to be worth the effort or risk. Plus, they should already be getting tax revenue from their citizens who are mining.

For smaller countries with cheap electricity, perhaps. Like, if your North Korea, and you've got all these nuclear plants for churning out plutonium, then why not? Or maybe you're Iceland, and you've got more geothermal energy than you know what to do with.

 

[Zaporro]

Good, very good.
We need more incidents like this, shed more light on shady crypto mining practices so governments ban it alltogether or heavily regulate it and monitor due to all potential abuses.

 

[Brian_R170]

Oh great, now that the supercomputer isn't being used for mining, the demand for video cards will increase.

 

[pensive69]

wow i'd call this supermining.

 

[StevenRix_from_France]

I work in a datacenter (won't disclose the location) and we do also cryptomining at work, since we don't use that much power at night time, I use around 3000 servers with multiGPUs. What I earn in 1 year is now made in barely 1 month. EVerybody's happy, the boss is happy. so are the employees.

 

[bit_user]

I work in a datacenter (won't disclose the location) and we do also cryptomining at work, since we don't use that much power at night time, I use around 3000 servers with multiGPUs. What I earn in 1 year is now made in barely 1 month. EVerybody's happy, the boss is happy. so are the employees.

Even assuming no wear on the equipment (presumably, it gets replaced on a schedule, so it's plausible that few failures will result from the mining), you're stealing a non-trivial amount of electricity. Just because the people footing the bill are happy (i.e. ignorant) doesn't mean it's right.

 

[popatim]

I got the impression that this was company sanctioned. Everyone's happy because it helps the company's profitability.
How else would 'all the employee's' and the boss be happy about a few night-shifters skimming the company's resources?

 

[USAFRet]

I got the impression that this was company sanctioned. Everyone's happy because it helps the company's profitability.
How else would 'all the employee's' and the boss be happy about a few night-shifters skimming the company's resources?

They only got caught because they hooked the stupid thing to the internet.
Which is needed for mining, but still hugely stupid.

Boris?
Yes, Vladimir..what?
Let's connect the SooperSekrit warhead simulator to the public internet.
Da. Good idea.

Meanwhile, down in the network office...
"WTF?"

 

[ArchitSahu]

I got the impression that this was company sanctioned. Everyone's happy because it helps the company's profitability.
How else would 'all the employee's' and the boss be happy about a few night-shifters skimming the company's resources?

They only got caught because they hooked the stupid thing to the internet.
Which is needed for mining, but still hugely stupid.

Boris?
Yes, Vladimir..what?
Let's connect the SooperSekrit warhead simulator to the public internet.
Da. Good idea.

Meanwhile, down in the network office...
"WTF?"

Hahahaha!

I am pretty sure a lot of Governments conduct crypto mining on the side, infact I think the SAF Cyber Division of Singapore is pretty invested in that right now.