The reflective outline of the landing pad illuminated the base of the helicopter as it touched down under attack from the raging Icelandic blizzard. As soon as the giant spinning blades stopped, boots hit the ground. The mission was simple: infiltrate the compound, steal the Bitcoin, and extract. Following Ryan, the group of highly trained assailants made their way toward the maintenance entrance of the crypto-mining facility. This was no ordinary facility, it was the largest in the world with nearly twenty percent of all hashing power. The facility contained a minimum quarter million state-of-the-art ASIC miners each with a hashing power equivalent to a thousand generic desktop computers. The cost of the machines alone is somewhere close to a billion dollars. 

“Careful, don’t let the cameras detect you,” Ryan said to Jack, Ana, and Ezekiel pointing towards the overhang above the maintenance hatch. Underneath the cameras, and next to the door, Ana removed the RFID transmitter from her toolbelt. She placed the transmitter on the keycard reader which lit bright green shortly after. The hatch clicked open and the team crawled through leading them to the main mining corridor. The ear-numbing shriek of the thousands of miners solving complex mathematical hashing functions made all else inaudible. Now inside the facility, the team quickly moved towards the pre-planned location where the data center containing nine hundred Bitcoins was presumed to be. The team was aware the heavily reinforced cast iron door was immune to acetylene torches, which meant the only way into the data center was an infeasible 30-hour attempt to grind it open or a much more risky precise detonation of the lock. Ezekiel, the demolitions expert, pressed the explosive into place and wirelessly connected it to the detonator. Unfortunately, if the door were opened without authorization from an offsite administrator, it would sound the alarms. Ana who arrived at the blast door first had immediately begun her attempt to crack the security system, which proved difficult.

Ana, furiously typing away on her custom Lenovo Thinkpad, said “The automated vulnerability scanner failed to find any exploits. I’m going to have to manually attempt to find a weak point in the software. It’s going to take me a minute.”

“Okay. Jack and I will look around the place in the meantime.” Ryan replied

After fifteen minutes of walking and no good news from Ezekiel or Ana, the two men heard a faint explosion echoing from behind them. 

“Ana found an exploit and we manage to blow open the door.”, Ezikiel shouted over the radio.

“That’s great, Ryan and I will be back in a few minutes.” Radioed Jack.

The men continued to search around security offices based on the blueprints in Jack’s tablet. 

A few minutes later, Ana in a frustrated tone exclaimed over the radio, “Guys, there’s a problem. Ezekiel and I found the main server rack, and I located the Bitcoin wallet, but the data is locked and protected by AES-256 encryption. Even if we managed to locate the hard drive the wallet was stored on, we still would have to decrypt it which could take thousands of years.”

“Dang it. Wait. Ana, you said AES-256 encryption right?”

“Yes, Ryan?”

“If I’m not mistaken, that’s the same algorithm that Bitcoin utilizes.”

“Yes, but how does that help us?”

“Would it be possible to reroute the hashing power of the facility’s Bitcoin miners and attempt to crack the encryption?”

“Hmmm. Actually, that might just work. I’ll attempt to make it work. Over.” 

After checking around the rest of the facility, and looking at documents, schematics, and random components, Jack and Ryan hadn’t found anything. 

“Where are you guys? We’ll have the Bitcoin as soon as the miners crack the hash.” Ezekiel said.

“Northern tip of the facility. We’re coming over,” said Ryan, as he and Jack began to jog south back towards the main corridor. On their way back through one of the in-construction mining buildings, they saw lights outside followed by revving engines. Snowmobiles!

“Ana, Ezekiel, we must have tripped some sort of silent alarm! Snowmobiles are arriving at the Northern point of the facility.”

“Crap. The hash is almost cracked. We need just 10 more minutes!” exclaimed Ana.

“Got it. We’ll try and delay them.” 

Now running, Ryan grasped his G-13 assault rifle, ready to destroy anything between him and the 900 Bitcoins. The sound of a door being kicked in behind them caused Jack and Ryan to rush for cover behind some crates. Peering over the crates, they saw snow blowing in through a hole where a door once stood. Then, a small cylindrical object flew through the hole clinking against the concrete ground. Seconds later, an explosion of light and both men are blinded. An insistent rain of fire begins to echo throughout the passageway.

TO BE CONTINUED…