Bitcoin Forum

https://cointelegraph.com/news/report-stealth-crypto-mining-much-more-prevalent-in-higher-ed-than-other-industries

Stealth Crypto Mining Much More Prevalent In Higher Ed Than Other Industries

Both intentional cryptocurrency mining and cryptojacking is becoming more prevalent on college campuses than in any other industry, according to a blog post published March 29 by cyber attack monitoring firm Vectra.

Vectra analyzed five industries where crypto mining – which the blog post defines as “an opportunistic attack behavior that uses botnets to create a large pool of computing power”, incorrectly combining crypto mining and cryptojacking into one use case – has occurred from August 2017 to January 2018, finding that “higher education” sees more mining than the other four industries combined.

Your opinion?

There's a few explanations for this that I can think of. Well-funded universities often have powerful computers and campuses full of computer labs. My feeling when I attended school was that there wasn't as much oversight as you see in corporate sectors. Often times, a goofy, absent-minded professor runs a lab with just a couple low-paid assistants. Industry tends to take security more seriously.

Then there's the fact that cryptocurrency is big with millennials (including college students). It's no secret that college kids are spending student loan money on crypto. They're probably buying mining rigs, too.

Maybe "higher education" folks are also smarter -- i.e. they see the writing on the wall that cryptocurrency is the future. :P

If electricity costs are not split up by department or building, that would be big one right there. Private companies would be more conscious of costs and rooting out where all that electricity is going. Students also don't get an electricity bill as electricity is provided as part of the housing costs.