A hack has been reported in the European region which is quite serious when it comes to the extent of hacking that is going on right now. Because while we have seen that the computers and devices of people are getting hacked which includes institutions and companies as well, there is now a new report which reveals that even supercomputers are getting hacked now. Well, the report here says that there is a confirmed infection going around in the countries such as the UK, Germany, Switzerland and even Spain.
It is also reported that the supercomputers that have been hacked are being used to mine cryptocurrency. At the moment, the report says that “Multiple supercomputers across Europe” have been hacked this week and a cryptocurrency mining malware has been installed inside them to utilize the computing power of these computers to mine cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, ethereum and other coins.
Since the hacks have been found and mining malware have been detected, these supercomputers have been closed now and the hacks are being investigated. A high-performance computing centre in Spain has been involved in this hacking incident and so have been other places in Europe such as the UK, Germany and Switzerland.
The first such report of an attack on the supercomputer and mining malware was found inside the University of Edinburgh’s ARCHER supercomputer. The University revealed that they have found a “security exploitation on the ARCHER login nodes,” and have reset all the SSH passwords as well as shut down the ARCHER system.
Since then, it has been found out that the ARCHER incident was not an isolated one as many other supercomputers have been affected including Hawk Supercomputer at University of Stuttgart and others. An early investigation reveals that “attackers appear to have gained access to the supercomputer clusters via compromised SSH credentials”.