About 64,000 Bitcoin Mining Rigs Had Hashrate Diverted to OCEAN Pool

A security incident redirected the computing power of about 64,000 Bitcoin (BTC) mining rigs to OCEAN’s mining pool while leaving Bitcoin’s protocol and consensus rules intact.

The diversion involved roughly 13 exahashes per second (EH/s). OCEAN’s hashrate briefly rose to about 50 EH/s and later stabilized near 40 EH/s, while the redirected capacity dropped to about 100 petahashes per second (PH/s). Most affected machines were redirected back or disconnected within a short time.

All diverted mining output went to a single payout address controlled by the attacker. The attacker mined no blocks, the address received no payment, and affected miners’ lost earnings cannot be recovered.

CoreX Hosting first notified operators after finding unauthorized changes to the pool settings on affected machines. The disruption affected one operator’s entire mining business.

Mining pool settings can redirect a rig’s work and potential rewards without changing Bitcoin’s transaction or consensus rules.