SBU-discovered data centre in Vinnytsia ran bot-boosting, not mining

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has clarified details of the investigation into the mining farm discovered a week ago in one of the former warehouse premises of Vinnytsiaoblenergo. Local media reported this.

According to a source in the SBU, the farm owners were actually using 3,800 PlayStation 4 Slim consoles to boost bots for the FIFA football video game.

“It was on PlayStation that bot boosting for FIFA was organized. And then they were sold,” he noted.

Typically, a gaming bot farm enables the extraction of in-game currency and the leveling up of characters. Subsequently, the accounts are sold in dedicated online stores.

The SBU’s press service declined to provide further detail, citing the secrecy of the investigation, but noted that the detailed analysis remains incomplete due to the large amount of equipment.

A representative of Vinnytsiaoblenergo said that their company has no involvement with the seized equipment, and the premises do not belong to them. He also added that from the premises “top-end graphics cards” were seized, and this hardware has not yet been evaluated.

As previously reported by the SBU on July 8, unknown residents of Kyiv and Vinnytsia installed in the building 3,800 gaming consoles, more than 500 graphics cards and 50 processors in the building, which were connected illegally to the power grid. All equipment allegedly used for mining cryptocurrency.

Based on preliminary estimates, the monthly loss from the farm’s operation amounted to around 5-7 million hryvnias.

The day after the SBU press release, Vinnytsiaoblenergo said that their specialists had not detected electricity theft, and the company’s premises had not been used for cryptocurrency mining.

Based on law-enforcement information, the National Commission for State Regulation of Energy and Utilities has suspected Vinnytsiaoblenergo of artificially inflating electricity costs due to cryptocurrency mining.

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