Homeland Security is investigating Chinese nationals Bitcoin Mining equipment maker Bitmain is a potential threat to national security, according to seven people familiar with the matter.
An anonymous source said bloomberg The DHS-led federal investigation (code-named “Operation Red Sunset”) mining The hardware could be remotely controlled for espionage purposes or to undermine the U.S. power grid.
The investigation coincides with an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which released a report in July concluding that Bitmain’s machines “could be forced to hand over data by China pursuant to China’s national security law.”
The report also declared that Bitmain’s miners have “the ability to be remotely controlled by Bitmain personnel in China.” new york times Articles for October 2023. Back in 2017, we reported on the discovery of a “backdoor” on Bitmain equipment.
Federal suspicions about Bitmain predate the current Trump administration, with then-President Joe Biden issuing an order in May 2024 prohibiting MineOne Partners from operating a mining facility near Francis E. Warren Air Force Base.
One of the main concerns underlying this divestment order was that MineOne Partners’ facilities were using “foreign-sourced” equipment that posed “serious national security concerns.”
These concerns remain under the current administration, despite the fact that President Donald Trump’s two sons have ties to Bitcoin in the US, which agreed to buy 16,000 Bitmain machines this year in a deal worth $314 million.
bloomberg‘s report suggests that the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation was supplemented by discussions at the White House National Security Council, where the investigation began during the Biden presidency and continued into “at least the early months of the Trump administration.”
Federal customs officials have also stopped and inspected Bitmain equipment at U.S. ports on various occasions, and the federal investigation into Bitmain is looking into whether any customs violations may have occurred.
Bitmain rejects any claims that its machines can be controlled remotely, saying: bloomberg The company said in a statement that it “does not engage in any activity that poses a risk to the national security of the United States,” and that it had not received any information regarding any federal investigation into its products.
decryption has reached out to Bitmain for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.
Can miners be controlled remotely?
Some mining experts suggest that while U.S. security concerns about foreign hardware are common across a wide range of high-tech industries, as in the case of Huawei, it is difficult to remotely control mining equipment without detection.
“These machines are built to do one thing: mine Bitcoin, so the backdoor primarily allows for remote adjustments such as switching pools, changing settings, and turning units on and off,” said Nishant Sharma, founder of mining consulting and communications firm Broxbridge.
Sharma said. decryption In large data centers, he said, external interference is “difficult to hide” as operators closely monitor the center’s hashrate and network traffic.
He added, “And unlike PCs and GPUs, most miners in industrial vehicles don’t have Wi-Fi, have very limited interfaces, and are pretty dumb devices from a security perspective.”
