Sydney resident Jonathan Hu avoided a potential ten-year prison sentence for mining cryptocurrencies on government supercomputers. This is reported by the local publication Sydney Morning Herald.
In 2018, Jonathan Hu worked as a contractor for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Using two government supercomputers, over the course of a month he mined Ethereum and Monero worth almost $6,897.
CSIRO estimates that the mining cost the agency $56,133. In court, the head of the cybercrime police department, Chris Goldsmid, stated that Hu had undermined public trust in the government.
“The actions of this man diverted computer resources from performing important scientific research for the country,” he stressed.
The man faced up to ten years in prison, but Judge Erin Kennedy took his plea, his loss of employment and lack of prior convictions into account. Hu was sentenced to 300 hours of community service and psychological counseling.
Earlier in August, Australian Katherine Nguyen received two years and three months in prison for stealing 100,000 XPR. She will be eligible for parole in autumn 2021.
Earlier, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, an AI-based system was created to detect illicit mining on supercomputers.
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