Russian nuclear weapons engineers arrested for “mining” cryptocurrency
A group of Russian engineers specializing in nuclear weapons research have just been arrested for using office computers to "mine" cryptocurrency.
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| A depiction of the Tsar Bomba nuclear bomb at the Nuclear Weapons Museum at RFNC-VNIIEF. Photo: ARSTECHNICA |
Arstechnica news site quoted information from Russia's Interfax news agency as saying that Russian engineers from the Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC-VNIIEF) were arrested for using the agency's computer resources to mine cryptocurrencies.
"There was an illegal act of using the agency's computer systems for personal purposes, including cryptocurrency mining," said Tatyana Zalesskaya, a spokeswoman for the Russian Federal Nuclear Center.
Ms. Tatyana Zalesskaya did not specify how many people had been arrested. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) also did not issue a statement about these arrests or related charges.
However, information from Interfax shows that the group of engineers was arrested for using the agency's supercomputer system to mine cryptocurrencies.
The Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC-VNIIEF) is based in Sarov, a city east of Moscow, and has been conducting research on nuclear weapons since 1946.
Due to the nature of the work here, there are technically no computers on site, including a supercomputer system used to simulate testing of nuclear weapons designs, which is connected to the Internet.
However, according to Mash news agency (Russia), someone intentionally connected the Internet to this supercomputer system and the FSB discovered it, opened an investigation and led to the arrest of the related subjects as mentioned above.
