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A former government contractor in Australia who mined cryptocurrencies using state-owned supercomputers avoided jail time.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Jonathan Khoo was ordered to complete 300 hours of community service for installing code on two supercomputers operated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO, to mine cryptocurrency.
Khoo was able to mine cryptocurrencies worth AU $ 9,420 and deposited them in its Ethereum and Monero wallets in 2018.
CSIRO, which conducts science and technology research for the Australian government, said Khoo’s actions diverted the necessary computing power and cost the agency AU 76,668. Australian federal cybercrime authorities said that by using supercomputers for personal gain, Khoo used valuable resources from climate change studies, pulsar data array analysis, and medical research.
Khoo’s mining business was discovered in February 2018 and he was fired from his employment. A year later charges came for unauthorized data modification to cause damage. The maximum penalty is 10 years of imprisonment.
This isn’t the first time that authorities have dealt with employees using supercomputers at work to mine cryptocurrencies. In 2019, a scientist and former employee of the Russian nuclear plant used the agency’s supercomputers to mine Bitcoin. He was sentenced to three years and three months in prison and fined 200,000 rubles ($ 3,130 at the time). Two other collaborators were fined.
