nuclear-news

Coindesk has reported that, on the same day, “a National Guard of Ukraine branch uncovered additional crypto mining equipment at the same nuclear plant. In this search and seizure, 16 GPU video cards, seven hard drives, two solid-state drives and routers were uncovered.” This was at the barracks of the National Guard tasked with protecting the plant. The Russian international television network RT has said that “the people who were supposed to be defending the highly dangerous piece of Ukrainian infrastructure could well have been behind the scheme.”

How was the nuclear power plant security compromised?

The UNIAN report, via Cointelegraph, stated that the cryptominers “compromised the nuclear facility’s security via their mining setup internet connection,” and “ended up leaking classified information on the plant’s physical protection system.”

According to a ZDNet report, the SBU is investigating the incident “as a potential breach of state secrets due to the classification of nuclear power plants as critical infrastructure.” As well as the apparent intent to misappropriate electricity and internet resources to mine cryptocurrency, the SBU is also investigating other lines of inquiry. One of these being whether the mining rigs could have been used to access the network to steal classified security data relating to the nuclear power plant.