From CIO Magazine:
US Researcher Banned for Mining Bitcoin Using University Supercomputers
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has banned a researcher for using supercomputer resources to generate bitcoin.
In the semiannual report to Congress by the NSF Office of Inspector General, the organization said it received reports of a researcher who was using NSF-funded supercomputers at two universities to mine bitcoin.
Mining is a process to generate the digital currency that involves complex calculations. Bitcoin can be converted to traditional currencies, and 1 bitcoin was worth roughly US$654 on Friday, according to indexes on CoinDesk.
The computationally intensive mining took up about $150,000 worth of NSF-supported computer use at the two universities to generate bitcoins worth about $8,000 to $10,000, according to the report. It did not name the researcher or the universities.
The universities told the NSF that the work was unauthorized, reporting that the researcher accessed the computers remotely, even using a mirror site in Europe, possibly to conceal his identity.
Totally not cool. When I managed a large software test lab at MSFT, I participated in the Project SETI with the permission of my boss. That was cool. Secretly using the computing resources for personal financial gain is not.
