Ukrainian nuclear power plant employees try to connect to the internet for mining cryptocurrency

The Ukrainian government is investigating the accidents of nuclear power plant employees connecting some internal networks to the external network to tap the digital currency. The Ukrainian intelligence service saw the accident as a potential leak of state secrets, and nuclear power facilities were classified as critical infrastructure. Investigators are examining whether an attacker is likely to use the mining machine as a foothold to access the nuclear power plant’s network to obtain system information, such as internal physical defense and protection.

“Satsop Nuclear Power Plant”by Dave Sizer is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The accident occurred at the nuclear power plant in South Ukraine. On July 10, the intelligence department raided the nuclear power plant and seized computers and equipment used to mine digital currency. According to court documents [1, 2], one case held six Radeon RX 470 GPU video cards, and the second five. It is unclear how the mining operations of nuclear power plants are detected.

Via: ZDNet