[2023-02-24] Secret cryptomine discovered in routine inspection of school

Kryptowerk

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Disobey.

Quote from: DaveF on February 24, 2023, 03:58:47 PM

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/secret-crawlspace-cryptomine-discovered-in-routine-inspection-of-ma-high-school/

Quote

that the mining operation had stolen nearly $18,000 in electricity from the district.

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CPD said that Nahas is presumed innocent until convicted in a court of law, but they found probable cause to charge Nahas with vandalizing the school and “fraudulent use of electricity.”

Makes you wonder how much of this is out there. Not the miner or 2 running in an office. But a more than a dozen or so that are shown in the picture.

Plenty of older buildings out there with power and ducting going who knows were as things were moved and reconstituted and changed over years and years of needing to have different things configured in different spaces.

-Dave

Since it's cheap to get out-of-date mining hardware I would guess there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands illegal mining activities running at this moment. Most of them probably teens leeching electricity from their parents and overheating their poor GPUs for some mili-ETH.
But just recently I heard about an IT guy working at a university nearby, who had some ASICs running alongside some real servers. And there are probably so many more similar activities that are going unnoticed.
Nice for decentralization, not so great if individuals are directly affected - but my guess is it's usually large companies or public place (-> tax payers) that are getting drained. Otherwise it would quickly ring some alarm bells as soon as the latest energy bill is presented.

Carlton Banks

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Quote from: Betwrong on March 14, 2023, 02:45:15 AM

You are talking like a pirate, man.

really, pirates say what I said? not sure about that

Quote from: Betwrong on March 14, 2023, 02:45:15 AM

Of course, sure, I used to think like that for quite some time when I was younger. But then changed my mind. After my friend died prison when he was only 28 years old, I changed my mind. And, yeah, that's what he was doing, "reclaiming property that was taken from others". But it was still just property. Yet he paid with his life for that.

ok, well can we stop calling them "corporations" and "government" then? because those are just euphemisms really.

the idea is that:

government protects fairness
corporations protect your pocket and their workers

...except instead government and corporations protect each other, and massively bully regular people. which is not what they pretend to do.

it seems like you understand the problem, yet your solution is "play their game and be nice to them". not a very bitcoin point-of-view, is it?

if saying "go against them" makes you a pirate, isn't that better?

Betwrong

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I stand with Ukraine.

Quote from: Carlton Banks on March 13, 2023, 08:16:10 AM

Quote from: Betwrong on March 07, 2023, 08:22:03 AM

I think it's a dangerous thing to have this policy and keep stealing thinking that you never steal from normal people, but only from corporations and governments. Firstly, someone normal can be fined or even fired because it was his/her responsibility to prevent such stealing. Apart from that, stealing from the governemt is usually punished severely and I wouldn't advise anyone to risk their freedom for the sake of getting some cash.

if the government already steals from citizens, and corporations are cheating both the spirit and the letter of the law, then is it not the case that anyone taking property from governments or corporations is in fact reclaiming property that was taken from others unfairly in the first instance?

and isn't it one's own responsibility as an employee to understand the ethics of their employer? if your employer is a thief, it would seem strange to expect fair treatment from them in almost any circumstances.

aren't we all using cryptocurrency because government currency together with their tax system steals from regular people and gives the money to their rich friends? you seem to be advocating to behave "fairly" to an organizations which are behaving aggressively and unjustly towards you and everyone else

You are talking like a pirate, man.

Of course, sure, I used to think like that for quite some time when I was younger. But then changed my mind. After my friend died prison when he was only 28 years old, I changed my mind. And, yeah, that's what he was doing, "reclaiming property that was taken from others". But it was still just property. Yet he paid with his life for that.

Carlton Banks

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Quote from: Betwrong on March 07, 2023, 08:22:03 AM

I think it's a dangerous thing to have this policy and keep stealing thinking that you never steal from normal people, but only from corporations and governments. Firstly, someone normal can be fined or even fired because it was his/her responsibility to prevent such stealing. Apart from that, stealing from the governemt is usually punished severely and I wouldn't advise anyone to risk their freedom for the sake of getting some cash.

if the government already steals from citizens, and corporations are cheating both the spirit and the letter of the law, then is it not the case that anyone taking property from governments or corporations is in fact reclaiming property that was taken from others unfairly in the first instance?

and isn't it one's own responsibility as an employee to understand the ethics of their employer? if your employer is a thief, it would seem strange to expect fair treatment from them in almost any circumstances.

aren't we all using cryptocurrency because government currency together with their tax system steals from regular people and gives the money to their rich friends? you seem to be advocating to behave "fairly" to an organizations which are behaving aggressively and unjustly towards you and everyone else

Betwrong

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I stand with Ukraine.

Quote from: Carlton Banks on March 06, 2023, 04:25:54 PM

Quote from: Betwrong on February 28, 2023, 05:56:14 AM

Stealing is bad, and stealing electricity is no different. It doesn't matter that you can't see or touch it, stealing it is still stealing. It seems that people like Nadeam Nahas don't understand it. I bet he wouldn't steal a bike from his neighbour, and yet he had stolen nearly $18,000 in electricity from the district, from his neighbours basically.

I once knew a thief with a policy: never steal from normal people.

His reasoning was that corporations and governments have an unfair advantage, and there's no other mean for redress other than to break the rules yourself, with corporations and governments as the target.

Maybe that wouldn't apply in this case, although:

1. I suspect the school pays for electricity out of it's regular budget
2. The regular budget is borrowed, and then paid back with stolen money from everyone's children/grandchildren

however, point 2 is incorrect, because it's actually infeasible to ever pay all the "public liability" type of debts back anyway

I think it's a dangerous thing to have this policy and keep stealing thinking that you never steal from normal people, but only from corporations and governments. Firstly, someone normal can be fined or even fired because it was his/her responsibility to prevent such stealing. Apart from that, stealing from the governemt is usually punished severely and I wouldn't advise anyone to risk their freedom for the sake of getting some cash.

That's why I said "Stealing is bad": it's not only morally bad like in the first example, it can be very harmful for the thief himself, and not in the "afterlife" or some "reincarnation", but here and now.

Carlton Banks

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Quote from: Betwrong on February 28, 2023, 05:56:14 AM

Stealing is bad, and stealing electricity is no different. It doesn't matter that you can't see or touch it, stealing it is still stealing. It seems that people like Nadeam Nahas don't understand it. I bet he wouldn't steal a bike from his neighbour, and yet he had stolen nearly $18,000 in electricity from the district, from his neighbours basically.

I once knew a thief with a policy: never steal from normal people.

His reasoning was that corporations and governments have an unfair advantage, and there's no other mean for redress other than to break the rules yourself, with corporations and governments as the target.

Maybe that wouldn't apply in this case, although:

1. I suspect the school pays for electricity out of it's regular budget
2. The regular budget is borrowed, and then paid back with stolen money from everyone's children/grandchildren

however, point 2 is incorrect, because it's actually infeasible to ever pay all the "public liability" type of debts back anyway

Kakmakr

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Yes, I remember in the days when people could still mine bitcoins with GPU's... many of my friends had rigs setup in their parents basement mining for bitcoins. I always told them that they were stealing from their parents, but they said... there are no difference between them using the electricity for gaming or if they used it to mine.

A lot of students also did this from their dorm rooms at university, but the sudden spike in the electricity cost.. lead to several of these rooms being raided by campus police. (They were actually looking for Marijuana farms) Grin

Betwrong

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I stand with Ukraine.

Stealing is bad, and stealing electricity is no different. It doesn't matter that you can't see or touch it, stealing it is still stealing. It seems that people like Nadeam Nahas don't understand it. I bet he wouldn't steal a bike from his neighbour, and yet he had stolen nearly $18,000 in electricity from the district, from his neighbours basically.

I don't want to justify him, but I want to blame people of culture, novelists, film directors, song writers etc. for making not enough efforts to explain people that things like electricity, cryptocurrencies, Wi-Fi signals and other seemingly imperceptible things can be as valuable as the things you can touch and see, and thus stealing it entails the same responsibility.

cr1776

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Quote from: DaveF on February 27, 2023, 07:10:58 AM

Quote from: nioctib_100 on February 26, 2023, 08:52:55 PM

Quote from: DaveF on February 24, 2023, 03:58:47 PM

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/secret-crawlspace-cryptomine-discovered-in-routine-inspection-of-ma-high-school/

Makes you wonder how much of this is out there. Not the miner or 2 running in an office. But a more than a dozen or so that are shown in the picture.

Operations like this are, realistically, probably far and few between. It takes a significant amount of funds to acquire dozens of miners and a significant amount of trust to leave them somewhere where they can be discovered and a) stolen or b)traced back to you, causing you to lose your job. Miners are like gold - thieves will break into buildings just to steal them. I can't imagine leaving a dozen miners somewhere that is relatively open to anyone to discover and take.

Guess it really depends on where you are and what you do and how much power the facility uses.
There are a lot of places out there that have been remodeled and reworked and reconfigured so many times that the amount of dead space is staggering.
That is actually the easy part. If they are not already pulling a ton of power it's more difficult to hide the bump in usage.
Then you have to acquire the miners and the internet.

I can think of at least 2 locations that we do IT support for that the maintenance people could probably get away with it, but they would have to come up with the money for the miners.

Here is where you have to wonder if there are people who go after them and just pay them off. If you have the miners and the major cost is power, if you could setup the miners and generate $2000 a month with the free power and then give the workers $1000 a month to keep them 'off the radar' of the owners / management the math would work. EXCEPT for the criminal nature of what you are doing. Just taking that off the table and doing this purely from a financial perspective.

-Dave

I worked at a large (20k+ people) computer company out of grad school (this was several decades ago) with lots of buildings, some older, some newer spread out over a larger geographical area for the part I worked with, maybe 2000 people in that section of the state, with plenty of areas that were empty except for maybe 1 person. I wouldn't have done it if bitcoin had even been around then, but it would've been easy to have a few miners in one section of the office and no one would even see it. With that many people in so many different buildings, multiple floors, secure areas etc also, I doubt they would've noticed the change in power usage.

It may not happen on the scale shown, but one or two in a closet off the office or under your desk, I bet that happens pretty frequently.

DaveF

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Quote from: nioctib_100 on February 26, 2023, 08:52:55 PM

Quote from: DaveF on February 24, 2023, 03:58:47 PM

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/secret-crawlspace-cryptomine-discovered-in-routine-inspection-of-ma-high-school/

Makes you wonder how much of this is out there. Not the miner or 2 running in an office. But a more than a dozen or so that are shown in the picture.

Operations like this are, realistically, probably far and few between. It takes a significant amount of funds to acquire dozens of miners and a significant amount of trust to leave them somewhere where they can be discovered and a) stolen or b)traced back to you, causing you to lose your job. Miners are like gold - thieves will break into buildings just to steal them. I can't imagine leaving a dozen miners somewhere that is relatively open to anyone to discover and take.

Guess it really depends on where you are and what you do and how much power the facility uses.
There are a lot of places out there that have been remodeled and reworked and reconfigured so many times that the amount of dead space is staggering.
That is actually the easy part. If they are not already pulling a ton of power it's more difficult to hide the bump in usage.
Then you have to acquire the miners and the internet.

I can think of at least 2 locations that we do IT support for that the maintenance people could probably get away with it, but they would have to come up with the money for the miners.

Here is where you have to wonder if there are people who go after them and just pay them off. If you have the miners and the major cost is power, if you could setup the miners and generate $2000 a month with the free power and then give the workers $1000 a month to keep them 'off the radar' of the owners / management the math would work. EXCEPT for the criminal nature of what you are doing. Just taking that off the table and doing this purely from a financial perspective.

-Dave

nioctib_100

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Quote from: DaveF on February 24, 2023, 03:58:47 PM

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/secret-crawlspace-cryptomine-discovered-in-routine-inspection-of-ma-high-school/

Makes you wonder how much of this is out there. Not the miner or 2 running in an office. But a more than a dozen or so that are shown in the picture.

Operations like this are, realistically, probably far and few between. It takes a significant amount of funds to acquire dozens of miners and a significant amount of trust to leave them somewhere where they can be discovered and a) stolen or b)traced back to you, causing you to lose your job. Miners are like gold - thieves will break into buildings just to steal them. I can't imagine leaving a dozen miners somewhere that is relatively open to anyone to discover and take.

DaveF

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Quote from: NeuroticFish on February 24, 2023, 04:04:03 PM

Quote from: DaveF on February 24, 2023, 03:58:47 PM

Makes you wonder how much of this is out there.

Far too many think that they can mine with free electricity. Just the electricity is actually not for free. Most of them are probably at work. Some also in their rented places.
I remember there were even nuclear scientists caught mining bitcoin at work, many years ago. I thought that by now people got smarter, but no, I see they're just greedier.

I know I mentioned it the other day but with rented places I see it happening more and more because landlords are getting greedier and tenants are getting more snarky about power.
At least around here a lot of rental spaces had a separate meter for each office / tenant. You paid you bill and that was that. But more places are now seeing electric as a profit center and charging people if you use it or don't. So they use it. No it's not free but if your bill went from between $75 to $90 paying direct and now it's $180 fixed then yeah you are going to say f--k it and use more power. *The $75 to $90 was power use, not the full cost of the account & other charges. Same now, the billing is different but its close to 2x the power charge + the "admin fee" and so on....

-Dave

NeuroticFish

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Quote from: DaveF on February 24, 2023, 03:58:47 PM

Makes you wonder how much of this is out there.

Far too many think that they can mine with free electricity. Just the electricity is actually not for free. Most of them are probably at work. Some also in their rented places.
I remember there were even nuclear scientists caught mining bitcoin at work, many years ago. I thought that by now people got smarter, but no, I see they're just greedier.

DaveF

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Activity: 3500

Merit: 6320

Crypto Swap Exchange

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/secret-crawlspace-cryptomine-discovered-in-routine-inspection-of-ma-high-school/

Quote

that the mining operation had stolen nearly $18,000 in electricity from the district.

Quote

CPD said that Nahas is presumed innocent until convicted in a court of law, but they found probable cause to charge Nahas with vandalizing the school and “fraudulent use of electricity.”

Makes you wonder how much of this is out there. Not the miner or 2 running in an office. But a more than a dozen or so that are shown in the picture.

Plenty of older buildings out there with power and ducting going who knows were as things were moved and reconstituted and changed over years and years of needing to have different things configured in different spaces.

-Dave

Topic: [2023-02-24] Secret cryptomine discovered in routine inspection of school (Read 208 times)