A technical supervisor at a Dutch wind farm operator has been sentenced to 120 hours of group service after it was found he had secretly put in cryptocurrency mining rigs at two wind farm websites – simply as the corporate was recovering from a ransomware assault.
Wind farm operator Nordex found that its generators weren’t solely producing inexperienced vitality, however have been additionally powering a secret cryptocurrency mining operation at two of its websites in Gieterveen and Waardpolder.
The unnamed rogue worker, who’s in his forties, linked three cryptocurrency mining rigs and two Helium community nodes (a tool which acts as each a wi-fi gateway and blockchain node) to his employer’s inside community between August and November 2022.
The mining rigs have been plugged immediately into Nordex’s router at a substation in Gieterveen, whereas the Helium hotspots have been put in contained in the precise wind generators on the Waardpolder website.
A courtroom in Assen heard that Nordex had shortly earlier than it found the unauthorised cryptomining tools been coping with a ransomware assault orchestrated by the infamous Conti gang.
The Dutch man is way from alone in making an attempt to show firm assets into cryptocurrency, as I’ve reported prior to now.
For example, in February 2018, a number of scientists on the Russian Federal Nuclear Heart in Sarov – a top-secret nuclear warhead facility – have been arrested for making an attempt to make use of one of many nation’s strongest supercomputers to mine Bitcoin. One in all them, Denis Baykov, was finally fined 450,000 rubles after being discovered responsible.
In the identical yr in China, headmaster Lei Hua misplaced his job after stealing the college’s electrical energy to energy a secret cryptocurrency-mining rig of eight servers that ran day and evening mining Ethereum.
Within the wind farm case, the courtroom was advised that the worker confirmed “no concern” concerning the potential disruption his motion might have induced to turbine operations, used to generate energy for hundreds of houses.
Ordered to pay €4,155.65 in damages to Nordex, plus the identical quantity to the state, the person has been sentenced to 120 hours of group service.
All organisations ought to do not forget that insider threats are a major drawback, particularly with technical workers having privileged entry to programs and information.
On this occasion, the message is evident. Renewable vitality could also be for the general public good, however that doesn’t imply that it’s essentially acceptable for the general public to take advantage of or monetise.
