Cryptocurrency miners discovered in the Supreme Administrative Court in Warsaw

Found in the ventilation duct and technical room of the NSA in Warsaw... cryptocurrency miners. The devices used the main building's electricity, but had their own Internet connection. Employees responsible for the technical service of the building are suspected of installing the excavators.

Why excavators cryptocurrency were placed in the building of the Supreme Administrative Court in Warsaw? Because they consume a lot of electricity and this is practically the only one, but their operation costs are high. In short, the cheaper the electricity, the more profitable such a device is. What if electricity were free... This is apparently what the yet unknown perpetrators (or perpetrators) thought when placing the devices in the NSA vaults. They connected them to the building's main network, but were careful to protect themselves by installing their own routers with Internet access.

Two excavators were far from each other - one in the ventilation duct on the top floor and the other under the floor of the technical room in the basement of the building. It is not known since when.

– Police officers were notified by the Supreme Administrative Court about the installation of devices among the court's technical infrastructure and took appropriate actions in the case, including dismantling and securing the disclosed electronic equipment – Judge Sylwester Marciniak, chairman of the Judicial Information Department of the Supreme Administrative Court, informed the media.

Who installed cryptocurrency miners at the NSA?

For now, however, it is still unknown who was responsible for installing the excavators and who benefited from it. However, it is known that after their disclosure, the court authorities terminated the contract with the company responsible for the technical service of the building.

The case is being handled by the police, who are investigating the theft of electricity under the supervision of the Warsaw Śródmieście-Północ District Prosecutor's Office. However, she was also notified internal security agency.

– This event did not result in any threat to the security of data stored in the Supreme Administrative Court – emphasizes judge Sylwester Marciniak.

No criminal charges have been brought against anyone yet. Experts in the field of energy and electricity were appointed to estimate the value of the stolen electricity, as well as IT experts.

Cryptocurrencies were also mined at the headquarters and at the NATO base

It is worth recalling that digging cryptocurrency using electricity from state institutions is nothing new in Poland. The most famous case was from 2021, when excavators were discovered in… Police Headquarters in Warsaw. The inventive miner turned out to be a civilian IT specialist employed by the command. However, he did not even install a special excavator for this purpose, because he used company equipment and configured it in the server room.

Similar incidents occurred around the world. It was also noisy NATO air base in Estonia. A number of cryptocurrency miners were detected in Ämari connected to electricity that was supposed to be used to operate the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's air fleet.

Crimes are more common when electricity prices become more expensive. Then - assuming that the price of cryptocurrencies does not increase - mining of glue tokens is no longer profitable.

Cryptocurrencies can be mined legally. The largest companies are already on the stock exchange

Despite this, companies that mine cryptocurrencies completely legally still operate successfully. However, they are often connected to renewable energy farms in the form of photovoltaic panels and windmills. Some of them operate in an almost fully automated process - when the profitability of cryptocurrency mining decreases and the price of electricity increases, the miners are turned off and the produced electricity is sold to the grid. However, when the profitability of digging increases, excavators work at maximum power.

The largest cryptocurrency mines are even listed on the American stock exchange. The biggest ones are Marathon and Riot Blockchain.