European Supercomputers Researching COVID-19 Outbreak Reportedly Hacked to Mine Cryptocurrency
Many of the supercomputers that suffered “security incidents” over the last week were reportedly being used for conducting research on the novel coronavirus outbreak, work that was apparently obstructed by the attacks.
Supercomputers in European countries including Germany, the UK and Switzerland were forced to shut down amid a series of intrusions made with the goal of installing cryptocurrency-mining malware, according to ZDNet. A similar “security incident” was reported from a high-performance computing centre in Spain. The malware reportedly saw the shutdown of the supercomputers as a means of restoring “a safe environment” and rewriting passwords and credentials.