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supercomputer

In increasing interest (and value) of cryptocurrencies has led some previously rational people to come upwardly with some wacky schemes to go rich quick. Instance in signal: Several Russian scientists working in one of the land's nearly secure enquiry facilities thought they could use the in-house supercomputer to mine some coins. Information technology was an interesting program, but the future crypto millionaires were stopped past regime before their mining operation could get off the basis.

The scheme took place at the Federal Nuclear Center in Sarov, but s-e of Moscow. This is ane of Russian federation's "closed cities" where simply authorized personnel are permitted. This facility in particular is the birthplace of the Soviet Union'south first working nuclear weapon. It still does nuclear research, and to that end, researchers deployed a shiny new supercomputer in that location in 2022. It was capable of one petaflop or processing, making it the 12th most powerful arrangement in the world. Considering of the classified nature of its work, Russia has not released many details on its blueprint. We merely know that it's based on x86 CPUs, and it'south probably more than powerful now than information technology was in 2022.

The alleged perpetrators of the mining scheme obviously thought they could put some of that processing power to use generating cryptocurrency. It takes a lot of processing power and electricity to generate valuable virtual coins, so miners either have to set upwardly shop where power is very cheap or consider some less-than-ethical means. Although, fifty-fifty a supercomputer probably wouldn't be able to mine much Bitcoin right at present on its conventional hardware.

Due to the sensitive nature of work done at the facility, many of the calculator systems are asunder from the internet, known equally air-gapping. The scientists were defenseless when attempting to connect the secure internal network to the net. Mining rigs demand to connect to other devices on a cryptocurrency's network in order to verify transactions and show "proof of work" to go new coins.

The facility's security team notified Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) upon detecting the rogue connections, and the scientists were arrested. A spokesperson for the Federal Nuclear Center says that a criminal case confronting the scientists is now ongoing, and at that place's every reason to expect Russian authorities will throw the proverbial book at the hopeful miners. So in example you were thinking about hijacking a classified Russian supercomputer to mine cryptocurrency, you might desire to expect elsewhere.