Supercomputers Are in Danger
The week is just starting, but we already have a story to tell.
This time cybercriminals attack supercomputers.
What happened?
Several countries report their supercomputers compromised – the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain.
- on Monday, German bwHPC reported 5 of their supercomputers have been switched off due to infection with a crypto-miner
- another infected system appeared to be ARCHER supercomputer, from Edinburgh University
- on Wednesday, cybersecurity expert, Felix von Leitner reported a hacked supercomputer in Barcelona
- on Thursday, a similar incident occurred in Leibniz Computing Center, LRZ
- later on, crypto miners infected more supercomputers, in Jülich and Munich
- Last week Switzerland’s center of scientific calculations (CSCS) also reported a similar incident of an infection.
Access to the centers where supercomputers are located was immediately closed, passwords were changed, and devices were disconnected from the Internet. So far, investigations are ongoing in all affected countries and there is no consensus on what happened.
It is assumed that cybercriminals managed to successfully perform the hack through malware and using certain system vulnerabilities.
Some experts believe that all these supercomputers were affected because of their involvement in COVID-19 outbreak study
Source: ZDNet
