Russian Bitcoin Mining "Plot" or Comedy of Errors?

In another round of what I can only describe as dark comedy, several Russian scientist were caught and apprehended when they tried to connect a Russian supercomputer to the internet. In an attempt to use its massive calculating power to mine some Bitcoin for themselves. The BBC has reported that the super computer can do the equivalent calculations of 1,000 trillion calculations per second, I'm guessing that would have worked out to be a significant amount of hashing power.

"There has been an unsanctioned attempt to use computer facilities for private purposes including so-called mining," a representative from the Scientific Research Institute for Experimental Physics was quoted as saying.
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These scientist will now be facing criminal charges for their failed Ocean's Eleven/Mission Impossible parody. Keep in mind that this attempt was made at a secret research facility that does not exist on most maps. It seems like a hair brained scheme at best, the were caught immediately when they tried to connect the computer to the internet. This was the tragic flaw in their plot. The super computer is normally kept offline due to security concerns and it became highly irregular when it did so. This red flag led to the cascade of events leading to the arrest of these individuals among a facility of 20,000 people.

 

I have so many questions:

• How long had they been planning this for?
• Were they going to let it run over night?
• Did they join a mining pool?
• Was it Antpool? Bet it was Antpool.
• Did they just decide one day to download Nice Hash and try their luck?
• How much hashing power would the computer have been able to bring to bear on the block chain?

I'm sure many of us have used supplies and equipment from the job. Printed out your taxes on the work printer and such. This takes it to a whole other level. While it would be great to set up a mining rig on my job's sweet free electricity, I could not imagine actually going through with it and I work at a fairly liberal university let alone a top secret Russian black site. There is no way this turns out well. But I guess #scientistneedlambostoo

 

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