Chinese Principal Fired for Crypto Mining on The Job

Headmaster Lei Hua has been fired from his job at a school in Hunan, China, after a total of nine mining rigs were found stealing his school's electricity to mine Ethereum, the BBC reported.

Chinese headmaster canned for mining cryptocurrency with school's electricityhttps://t.

Of 14,700 yuan, the equivalent of $2,100 USD.Cybersecurity expert Matthew Hickey was quoted by the BBC as saying the noise and heat generated by the rigs would be "Very noticeable," but Hua reportedly staved off concerns over the noise by claiming it came from the school's heating and air conditioning units.

The headmaster installed mining rigs in the school's computer lab between the summers of 2017 and 2018.

Each of these mining machines cost Hua over $1,500 USD. He decided to use the school's power because of the electricity costs associated with mining at home.

The ninth machine belonged to the school's deputy headmaster, who was let-off with an official reprimand.

"Sadly, stealing electricity is one way that people have tried to maximize their revenue - by avoiding those costs it can drastically improve returns on a mining operation."

In addition to offsetting energy costs, the headmaster and his deputy were also able to harness the school's computing power to mine Ethereum at scale.

The university discovered that the school's entire network was compromised with mining malware.

Installed malicious software on the school's network and the software tried to hijack the university's 150 computer servers for illicit mining.