Weather bureau staff investigated for alleged cryptocurrency mining on work computers

Look, mining cryptocurrency off work computers mightn't be the greatest of ideas.

Two IT employees at Australia's Bureau of Meteorology are under investigation by the Australian Federal Police, alleged to have used the agency's computers to mine cryptocurrencies, according a report by ABC News.

Police executed a search warrant at the Melbourne headquarters of the organisation, questioning two employees while the rest of the IT staff were told to wait in a conference room.

No charges have yet been laid, but one staffer is reportedly on leave. While it's not illegal to mine cryptocurrency per se, it could be considered an illegal use of government resources.

As the country's chief weather organisation, the Bureau would have some powerful computers on hand. Mining cryptocurrency is an expensive, energy-draining exercise, and well, you can kind understand why people may be tempted to use someone else's machines to do it.

With the dramatic rise in the value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and countless others in the past year, there have more notable cases of less-than-savoury cryptocurrency mining.

One was in the form of YouTube ads, hijacking the CPU of unsuspecting viewers to mine cryptocurrencies.

Other examples are more brazen. Last month, hackers installed crypto-mining software onto a Tesla cloud account, while 11 people were arrested for stealing computers from data centres in Iceland for mining.

At just a tick under $10,000 for one Bitcoin, there's certainly incentive for those who have the technical nous to do it -- and of course, authorities are paying attention.