Russia arrests several scientists working at a top-secret nuclear warhead facility for ‘using its supercomputers to mine bitcoins’
Engineers at Russian Federal Nuclear Centre in the city of Sarov were detained
The suspects have been accused of compromising the remote facility’s security
The centre was the birthplace of the Soviet Union’s first nuclear weapons
By ALEX GREEN
DAILYMAIL.COM
10 February 2018
Russian security services have arrested several engineers at a top-secret nuclear warhead facility for using its supercomputers to mine bitcoins.
The suspects were busted using computers at The Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov, western Russia, to mine crypto-currencies, local media reports.
Several employees at the Russian Federal Nuclear Centre in the city of Sarov have been detained after making ‘an attempt to use the work computing facilities for personal ends, including for so-called mining,’ a spokeswoman for the centre, Tatiana Zalesskaya told Interfax news agency.
‘Their activities were stopped in time,’ she added.
‘The bungling miners have been detained by the competent authorities. As far as I know, a criminal case has been opened regarding them,’ she added, without saying how many were detained.
The centre is overseen by Rosatom, the Russian nuclear agency, and works on developing nuclear weapons.
Such attempts ‘at our enterprises will be harshly put down, this activity technically has no future and is punishable as a crime,’ the centre’s spokeswoman said.
In 2011, the centre switched on a new supercomputer with a capacity of 1 petaflop, which at the time made it the twelfth most powerful in the world, Russian television reported.
During the Cold War, Sarov was a top-secret city in the Nizhny Novgorod region, about 300 miles east of Moscow.
Its Soviet era name was Arzamas-16 and the centre was the birthplace of the Soviet Union’s first nuclear weapons.
Sarov is still a closed city whose inhabitants are subject to travel restrictions, with barbed wire fences to keep the curious out.
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