University campuses aren't just producing new college graduates. They're also churning out lots of cryptocurrency.Security researchers at Cisco have been monitoring cryptocurrency mining across different industry verticals, and college campuses are the second biggest miners of virtual currencies, at about 22 percent.
This is probably due to opportunistic students who are creating mining rigs in their dorm rooms, according to Cisco threat researcher Austin McBride. "You leave [the mining rig] running in your dorm room for four years, you walk out of college with a big chunk of change," he said during a Monday talk at RSA.
The students are likely mining the cryptocurrency to capitalize on the free electricity they receive from the university campus. "So you can run your mining rig in your dorm or school library and not worry about those costs eating into your mining profitability," McBride ...