Outsourcer at Australian company exploited his employer's supercomputer and carried out illegal mining bitcoin.
An Australian court found an IT manager guilty of being hired by a company in Australia to carry out archiving data and software support. The reason was that this man took advantage of his employer's supercomputer by modifying its data, in order to conduct illegal and unlicensed cryptocurrency mining.
Jonathan Khoo, 34, worked at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization = CSIRO), a company that operates the Parkes Radio Telescope which obtained the first images and video from Apollo 11 when it touched down on the moon. These days, one of the tasks of the Parkes telescope is to look for Pulsars.
The Australian Federal Police estimate that Khoo managed to collect about 9.400 AUD ($ 6.800) bitbucks, but on the other hand wasted 76.000 AUD ($ 55.000) in estimated calculation time and electricity, to extract them.
Ο Khoo was found guilty in February and at the end of last week was sentenced to 15 months in prison. His sentence, however, has the potential to be converted into various forms, such as house arrest and curfew and the obligation of 300 hours of social work.
