A few scientists working at a top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility have been arrested for mining Bitcoin (BTC).
The scientists were working at The Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov
The Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov is a top-secret facility in a top-secret town in Western Russia, situated East of Moscow and South of Nizhniy Novgorod. The facility was the first that have produced a nuclear warhead during the Cold War under the Stalin’s leadership.
The city of Sarov is so secret that it doesn’t even appear on old maps of Russia and the Russians need special permits to be allowed to visit the city.
The scientists tried to use the facility’s top-secret supercomputer to mine Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin mining is not illegal in Russia as the cryptocurrencies have been accepted by the Russian government in 2016. However, using a top-secret supercomputer to mine for Bitcoins (BTC) is still illegal in any country of the world.
The scientists plotted to use the nuclear warhead facility’s supercomputer to mine for Bitcoin (BTC) but missed one important aspect. The supercomputer shouldn’t have been connected to the Internet, no matter what, to avoid possible hackers attacks on the facility.
Thus, as the scientists didn’t obey the most important rule, the Russian secret service noticed that the computer is connected to the Internet and sent officers to check this out.
The officers arrested several scientists under the accusation of using a top-secret supercomputer for Bitcoin (BTC) mining. The scientists are now in the Federal Security Service’s custody.
What makes that supercomputer so special?
The Federal Nuclear Centre’s supercomputer has the capacity of 1 petaflop which means it is able to make 1,000 trillion calculations per second and, additionally, it is linked to the top-secret mainframe of the Russian army and secret services.
Thus, that computer shouldn’t be connected to the Internet because any hackers that attack that computer would put their hands on very sensitive documents.
Even though the Russian government has arrested the nuclear scientists accused of mining Bitcoin (BTC) because they were endangering the government’s eyes-only documents, there are many reports about Russian facilities that mine Bitcoin (BTC) and no measures are taken, yet.
