According to recent news from the Polish channel TVN24, a huge cryptocurrency mining system was discovered that operated beneath the Supreme Administrative Court in Warsaw, Poland.
The country's authorities were called to the location where they found several high-performance computing equipment that mined digital currencies and were hidden in the ventilation space and on the technical floor.
The discovery took place in September and the investigation is now being carried out by the Public Ministry, and the Internal Security Agency has also been notified about the case. Through a letter sent to the TVN24 newsroom, judge Sylwester Marciniak, president of the Information Department of the Supreme Administrative Court, confirmed this discovery.
According to the judge: the Supreme Administrative Court notified the authorities about the installation of the devices among the court's technical infrastructure, and they took the appropriate measures in the case, including the dismantling and security of the disclosed electronic equipment.
According to details revealed by the Polish news channel, two weeks after the discovery of the system, the court terminated the contract with a company responsible for IT maintenance in the building. And before the contract ended, this same company had fired two employees who would be responsible for maintaining the parts of the building where the system was hidden.
Unofficial information indicates that the equipment could consume electricity worth several hundred to several thousand zlotys per month (1000 zlotys = ~228 euros). It is also known that the machines were connected to their own modems and, as such, would not be connected to the court's network. According to Judge Marciniak, “the event did not result in a threat to the security of data stored at the Supreme Administrative Court".
Prosecutor Szymon Banna said that procedural steps are currently underway to investigate the circumstances of the incident. The Public Prosecutor's Office appointed experts in the field of IT, electricity and energy consumption to determine the amount of electricity consumed and its value.
