Russians Were Caught Using a Supercomputer to Mine Crypto

Regardless of the fact that the cryptocurrencies’ value goes through an unclear period, more and more crypto mining centers appear. Some of them operate legally, other not.

The town of Sarov (Russia) is known for being the home of a petaflop-capable supercomputer that started its activity in 2011. The company which own it is named the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics.

According to Russian SecurityLab.ru two employees who were part of the private nuclear center were detained after they tried to mine virtual coins using the supercomputer.

Currently, personal information about these two employees has not been disclosed- yet. Due to the positions they occupied in the company, it was possible to access the advanced equipment owned in the building. The final step was to connect them to the Internet and start the mining process.

Unfortunately for employees, in a short time, the supercomputer’s security system sent a notice to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). What followed left the men without custody on condition not to leave the country.

The nuclear hub is also known as the Russian Federal Nuclear Center (VNIIEF). The company is one of the owners of most powerful supercomputers in Russia. There are only two of them in the whole country.

A petaflop is “the ability of a computer to do one quadrillion floating point operations per second”.

Russia has begun to involve more since this year in developing the crypto system. They are preparing to launch a national virtual currency- CryptoRuble. It is also known that the largest bank in Russia has made major investments in opening a lab for testing the blockchain based solutions.

However, Russian officials have announced these weeks about a possible law that will tax the revenue from cryptocurrency trading.