Scientists arrested for mining Bitcoin in secret installations of the Russian government

Beyond the political overtones, the Russian government has been known for its variant stance before the rise of cryptocurrencies, not only against its trade, but also as regards the issue of miners. The mining of these assets has been included in the bill for the cryptocurrencies of the country, with several officials proposing that the miners declare taxes on their profits for this activity.

However, when it comes to the secret facilities of a government as influential in world politics as Russia, having these spaces for personal activities can be considered a crime from every point of view.

Precisely that is what has happened in the Russian city of Sarov, where several scientists who worked in a secret nuclear installation were arrested by authorities after they were allegedly found mining Bitcoins in the supercomputer of the facility. As expressed by the Federal Nuclear Center:

There was an unauthorized attempt to use the computer facilities for private purposes, including the so-called mining.

According to a report offered by BBC News, the supercomputer that was used for mining alerted the authorities at the precise moment in which the scientists tried to connect to the Internet. In this sense, the arrested scientists were put under the command of the Federal Security Service (FSB), however, it is not clear what the charges are.

If we take into account the way in which these scientists were captured by mining bitcoins, their 'naive' action can be cataloged, since, although using a supercomputer for this purpose is a good idea, to do it from a secret nuclear installation. of Russia is not so.

As the reports suggest, the supercomputer in question is a high power machine, with a capacity of 1 petaflop, which allows it to execute 1,000 trillion calculations per second. However, it should not be connected to the Internet, which was crucial to catch scientists in their attempt to make money with government hardware, in a facility that produced the first nuclear bomb in the Soviet Union.