A former CSIRO IT contractor has escaped jail time for using the country’s peak science and research organisation’s supercomputer to mine cryptocurrency.
Jonathon Khoo was sentenced to a 15-month intensive corrections order at Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on Friday after pleading guilty to the charges.
Khoo was charged by the Australian Federal Police in May 2019 for modifying the computer systems of CSIRO without authorisation to access the processing power.
The charges included unauthorised modification of data to cause impairment and unauthorised modification of restricted data.
Magistrate Erin Kennedy on Friday said Khoo had installed and run 2903 command scripts into CSIRO’s two high performance computers (HPC) and the Claymore Dual Miner software.
In doing so, Khoo generated $9422 worth of cryptocurrency mining proceeds in the form of Ethereum and Monero.
While there was no “impairment to the CSIROs” operations, Kennedy said the use of the systems for period of just over a month in duration reduced the performance of the HPC.
She said the HPC was also used by the Royal Australian Navy and Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
CSIRO put the total cost of the HPCs reduced capacity at $76,668, including hardware and software.
Kennedy described the offence as “reckless” with “some level of planning”, but acknowledged Khoo’s remorse.
She also noted that Khoo had admitted his guilt to police almost immediately after a search warrant was executed in 2019.
Khoo was handed a 15-month ICO – a custodial sentence served in the community – with 300 hours of community service.
More to come