Crypto mining hacks have been taking a toll of the world as more and more people are either affected by these or are getting involved in these. But this news from Sarov, Russia is different and shocking as a Russian Engineer used the country’s most powerful supercomputer to mine Bitcoin in a secret nuclear lab.
Several scientists at Sarov nuclear center were arrested for using the supercomputer for mining cryptocurrency. This institute is home for Russia’s most powerful supercomputers, and this is where the first Soviet nuclear weapon was produced in 1949.
The accused employee, Denis Baykow, is fined 450,000 rubles($7,000) by Sarov city court for the act of mining Bitcoin on one of the supercomputers. The court stated that he was found guilty of accessing and using computer information illegally.
Andrei Rybkin and Andrei Shatokin are two other employees who are waiting for their trial and sentencing for the same matter. The supercomputers in the center are reported to reach the speeds of 1,000 trillion transactions per second. It also operates on a special network which is isolated from the internet security.
Lawyer of one of the defendants, Alexei Kovalyov, told the media that his clients developed a software that would help in avoiding the detection. He also told the media how they had already mined some Bitcoins before getting caught.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency that is built on blockchain technology, and it consumes more energy than the country of Switzerland. The energy costs for the mining of Bitcoin are very high.
