Polish police have discovered an illegal cryptocurrency mining operation run by an IT specialist at their headquarters in Warsaw.
The civilian employee reportedly used the station’s computers, which he upgraded with specialised software, to mine cryptocurrency. He also stole the station’s electricity for the power-intensive process.
The National Police Command’s (KGP) spokesman, Mariusz Ciarka, told Notes from Poland that the employee in question did not access police databases. No breaches of the internal Police Data Transmission Network had been detected.
“The machine he was using was not connected to any database, and the whole case mostly concerns the theft of electricity, which is needed in abundance to mine cryptocurrencies,” he said in a written response.
The suspect has been “immediately fired” and another employee – whose role in the operation has not been disclosed – is also reportedly due to be dismissed. The district prosecutor’s office in Warsaw is launching an investigation into the operation.
Crypto-mining is a process whereby computers solve cryptographic puzzles to validate blockchain transactions and are rewarded with newly minted virtual currencies.
Niebezpiecznik, a Polish security news website, commented on the news saying that during audits its experts regularly find employees “privately” mining for cryptocurrencies using company server rooms. These cases almost always lead to the firing of the suspect.
A similar operation was discovered in Hungary last October when the Budapest municipal authorities found a bitcoin farm in their offices. Also last year, an IT specialist was found to be illegally mining Ethereum, another cryptocurrency, at the Lamezia Terme airport in the Calabria region of Italy.
Main image credit: Jorge Franganillo/Flickr (under CC BY 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
