Share this article
Baidu Employee Jailed for Mining Crypto on 200 Company Servers
The search engine developer downloaded monero mining scripts onto 200 of Baidu's servers.
Updated Sep 14, 2021, 8:19 a.m. Published Mar 16, 2020, 3:00 p.m.
Working at internet giant Baidu provided too much temptation for one employee, who got in legal hot water for harnessing the firm's massive trove of servers to mine cryptocurrency.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
According to a report from China-focused news site Abacus on Monday, An Bang – a senior engineer working on Baidu’s popular search engine – downloaded monero mining scripts onto around 200 Baidu servers between April and June 2018.
The extra load on the systems, though, was spotted by the company, which made a report to police, resulting in the staffer's arrest. An was ultimately handed down three years' jail time and a fine of 11,000 Chinese yuan ($1,568) in sentencing last month, as per the report.
The case is the latest in a string of instances where employees have succumbed to the ease of access to workplace power or infrastructure to try and make some free crypto, only to fall foul of the law.
Recently, in Russia, scientists at a top secret nuclear lab were given time in a penal colony or fines for the same crime. Ukraine has also had staff within its court system and railways caught red-handed mining their illicit gains at work.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Coinbase Sees Crypto Recovery Ahead as Liquidity Improves and Fed Rate Cut Odds Climb
The crypto exchange also took note of a so-called AI bubble that continues to go strong and a weaker U.S. dollar.
What to know:
- Coinbase Institutional is seeing a potential December recovery in crypto, citing improving liquidity and a shift in macroeconomic conditions that could favor risk assets like bitcoin.
- The firm's optimism is driven by rising odds of Federal Reserve rate cuts, with markets pricing in a 93% chance easing next week, and improving liquidity conditions.
- Several recent institutional developments, including Vanguard's crypto ETF policy reversal and Bank of America's greenlighting of crypto allocations, have contributed to bitcoin's rebound from recent lows.
Top Stories
