Google Project Suspended due to cryptocurrency mining

[Chris Browne]

Hello,

I'm managing a small game studio and we started using Google Cloud to test it out recently but my project has just been suspended due to cryptocurrency mining.  Nobody at Item 42 has done any cryptocurrency mining on the VM instance in question, and there are no log files that suggest either unauthorised access nor cryptocurrency mining to me.  I am trying to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible as my current suspicion is that the server was compromised, and I need to know quickly if any of our data has been leaked (fortunately we are still trialling the google cloud so there was very little data of any import on the server in question).

The worst part is that the appeal system seems to be broken - I submitted an appeal, but the UI just gets stuck on "Submitting appeal request...".  I tried again several times but never got past that point.

Can someone help me out with understanding just what exactly happened and how?  This is really tarnishing the Google Cloud experience for us, and I was already pretty reluctant to put much faith in cloud services as my professional experience with them has burned me quite a few times as well.

Best,

Chris

Director / Engineer

Item 42 Ltd.

[Kamran (Google Cloud Support)]

Hello Chris,

Sorry to hear that. Can you please email me your project ID to investigate the issue?