Russian Scientists Busted For Mining Cryptocurrency at a Nuclear Research Facility

Mining a single Bitcoin is not a cakewalk; it requires a huge amount of computational power and energy. With the skyrocketing value of cryptocurrency over the past year, people are doing crazy things to gain sweet digital eggs.

Recently, Russian security officers busted some of the scientists from a highly confidential Russian nuclear weapon facility for allegedly using one of the nation’s most powerful supercomputers to mine Bitcoin.

Located in a restricted area with high security in Sarov, Russia, this nuclear facility is the birthplace of the Soviet Union's first nuclear bomb. It is also known as the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics which works on nuclear weapons. The facility set up a new supercomputer in 2011 with a capacity of 1 petaflop and at the time it was the 12th most powerful supercomputer in the world.

According to reports, when the greedy scientists were attempting to connect the lab's supercomputer to the internet, which was supposed to be offline to ensure security, the nuclear center's security department got alerted and quickly realized something was not right and they busted the scientists trying to mine Bitcoins red-handed. The arrested scientists have been handed over to the Federal Security Service for further action.

This what head of the Federal Nuclear Center, Tatyana Zalesskaya stated:

"There has been an unsanctioned attempt to use computer facilities for private purposes including so-called mining. Their activities were stopped in time. The bungling miners have been detained by the competent authorities. As far as I know, a criminal case has been opened regarding them."