Unauthorized mining caught! Baidu engineer sentenced to three years for using company's over 200 servers for crypto mining.

A software engineer at the Chinese internet giant Baidu couldn't resist the temptation of money. Driven by personal gain, he used his own computer to implant mining malware in 200 company servers to mine cryptocurrencies. Eventually, he was discovered by the company, sentenced to three years in prison, and fined 11,000 RMB (1,568 USD).

Baidu Employee Uses Company Resources for Profit

According to a public document released by the China Judgment Document Network, a Baidu engineer surnamed An, responsible for maintaining the Baidu search engine, installed cryptocurrency mining software on 200 Baidu servers between April and July 2018. The software directed the servers to a cryptocurrency mining pool, allowing him to mine cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Monero by utilizing the hardware and network resources of the computers.

In early June 2018, Baidu discovered through its security monitoring system that a large number of servers were operating abnormally. After reviewing the backend operation logs, it was revealed that the engineer surnamed An was behind these actions. Investigations showed that the engineer had sold some of the mined cryptocurrencies for a profit of 100,000 RMB (approximately 43,200 TWD). Currently, there are about 1.44 bitcoins in the mining pool wallet and approximately 1.5 bitcoins on an external trading platform. As a result of the trial, the engineer has been sentenced to three years in prison and fined 11,000 RMB (1,568 USD).

Mining Resource Theft is Not Uncommon

Cryptocurrency mining can be a profitable business, but due to high electricity and equipment costs, many unscrupulous individuals resort to illegal means to reduce mining expenses by stealing resources.

In February of this year, a father and two sons surnamed Yang in Taipei allegedly tampered with Taiwan Power Company's power lines to disrupt the electricity meters, allowing them to mine a large amount of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies without incurring high electricity costs, resulting in the theft of up to 85 million TWD in electricity fees.

Furthermore, at the end of last year, a Taiwan Power Company inspector surnamed Lu was found to have colluded with a major electricity theft client, accepting kickbacks totaling 4.915 million TWD, to help mining operators steal electricity and operate mining facilities to profit from mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. When the police and prosecutors raided the site at the end of last year, Lu even tipped off the operators to destroy evidence. Eventually, those involved were prosecuted by the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office on charges of leaking confidential information, breach of trust, document forgery, and fraud.

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