The case of miners from the closed science city of Sarov, who mined bitcoins on an official supercomputer, was transferred to court. This was reported to RT in the press service of the Sarov City Court of the Nizhny Novgorod Region.
As follows from the information posted on the official website, the accused in the case are two ex-employees of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC — VNIIEF) Andrei Rybkin and Andrei Shatohin. Another employee, Denis Baykov, involved in the use of official computers for mining, was sentenced by the court to a fine of 450 thousand rubles on September 17, 2019.
The best programmers of the country
The scandal at the RFNC-VNIIEF, which is part of the Rosatom state corporation, became known in February 2018. Then the security services detained three employees of the nuclear center. According to security officials, scientists used a service supercomputer to get bitcoins.
The lawyer of one of the accused employees, Aleksey Korolev, told RT that the engineers until the last moment hoped that they could not be calculated, since they were the best programmers in the country.
“They’ve been preparing for several months: they’ve studied how to extract cryptocurrency. We looked at whether the computer meets the necessary capacities, and also developed our own program to go unnoticed. In the computer, the task manager always reflects where and when the user went. They developed a program that did not display this information in the task manager. We thought that no one could calculate them like that, because they are professionals in the field of programming, ”says RT Korolev.
According to him, as a result, the officers of their own security department and the FSB did not immediately detain them, and the defendants still managed to get cryptocurrency.
“I can’t say what operational measures were taken to detect them, because some of them are still classified. Investigators said during the investigation that the case was under control of the presidential administration and allegedly even reported to Putin about this. But one thing I can say for sure, they were not detained on the first day when they started mining, ”the lawyer explains.
Admitted guilt
The lawyer notes that immediately after the arrest, the miners pleaded guilty and testified.
“At first, the court chose a preventive measure in the form of detention, but later it was replaced with a recognizance not to leave taking into account the fact that they gave confession statements. Of course, they regret what they did. But I think they went for it because of professional interest, and not for the purpose of gain, ”Korolev suggests.
As RT found out, subsequently investigators set aside a separate criminal case against Denis Baykov, who was responsible only for connecting the computer. He was charged under Art. 272 of the Criminal Code (illegal access to computer information), and have already been sentenced to a fine.
As told RT, the press secretary of the Sarov City Court of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Svetlana Kalyuta, the third person involved was fined.
“According to part 3 of article 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on September 17, he was sentenced to a fine of 450 thousand rubles with deprivation of the right to hold positions in the public service and in local authorities for 2 years and six months, ”Kalyuta explained.
The case against the other two defendants Andrei Rybkin and Andrei Shatokhin went to court on September 11, but the date of the first hearing has not yet been set. They are charged under articles of art. 272 of the Criminal Code (unlawful access to computer information), Art. 273 of the Criminal Code (creation, use and distribution of malicious computer programs), as well as Art. 274 of the Criminal Code (violation of the rules for operating storage, processing or transmission of computer information and information and telecommunication networks).
According to the lawyer, the accused employees graduated with honors, were in good standing with VNIIEF. Russian President Vladimir Putin personally shook hands with one of them when he arrived in Sarov in 2014. Then they were introduced as promising young scientists.
“Because of what they did, they lost their posts in the state corporation. Of course, their salary was higher than the average by the standards of the city, but I do not think that now they receive less. My client deals with municipal government procurement contracts. That is, state corporations, to which the same VNIIEF belongs, earn money on tenders for the provision of computer technology, ”says the lawyer.
It is worth noting that in the summer of 2009, at a meeting of the Commission for Modernization in Sarov, Andrei Shatohin presented the new supercomputer to the general public. Then in the stories of the media he was listed as the head of the research laboratory of the Institute of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics.
Representatives of the FSB in the Nizhny Novgorod region were not available for comment. The press service of the RFNC-VNIIEF also did not say anything.
Meanwhile, immediately after the detention of employees, representatives of the institute stated that the miners did not cause damage to the enterprise.
“Thanks to joint work with security agencies, this activity was timely suppressed. Woe-miners were detained by the competent authorities. As far as we know, a criminal case has been instituted against them. Please note that such attempts have recently been recorded in a number of large companies with large computing power. At our enterprises, they will be severely suppressed, this is a technically unpromising and criminally punishable occupation, ”the press service of the nuclear center said.