Hackers tried to crack supercomputers in European countries last week to use their power to mine crypto.
Entire clusters of supercomputers were stabbed in several countries, such as Germany, the UK, Spain, and Switzerland. Hackers tried to crack mainly university machines.
Last Monday, the press service of the University of Edinburgh, on whose territory the ARCHER computer operates, was one of the earliest to report an attack.
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Then attacks were recorded by major German and Spanish universities. University administrations have decided to turn off computers during the attack.
An expert report from Computer Security Incident Response Team said that, most likely, the hackers received SSH credentials from Canadian and Chinese universities. That's a protocol for the safe operation of services on an insecure network.
Having access to such data, the attackers connected to the site of supercomputers, and then with the help of malicious software, they tried to start mining Monero (XMR). Note that this digital currency is widespread among hackers. They periodically inject viruses into the computers of Internet users to secretly use their power for mining XMR.