Today several exchanges are announcing that they have become the victims of malicious hacks resulting in a loss of bitcoin from their wallets. Excoin apparently lost coins from their hot wallets, and then pushed more funds from their cold wallets into their hot wallets to assure they had funds for users that were making withdrawals. Meanwhile Bter is reporting that they have lost 7170 BTC from their cold wallet and are offering a reward of 720 BTC for chasing it back. And finally...there is speculation that HitBTC may also have been hacked as they don't appear to be allowing withdrawals at the moment. HitBTC has not released any official information on the matter yet though.Exco.in
Status: Hack Confirmed
Date: Occurred - February 6th-11th, Announced - February 15th
Coins Lost: Unknown
From Exco.in:
February 6th and 10th, the user 'Ambiorx' was able to gain access to all the Bitcoins on the Exco.in exchange. As a result we no longer have the means necessary to continue operation and are deeply saddened to announce we will be shutting down operations this month. The trading engine has been disabled and Exco.in user accounts will remain active, with the exception of Ambiorx's account and those who may be affiliated.
Sources
Bter.com
Status: Hack Confirmed
Coins Lost: 7170 BTC
Bter hasn't posted a ton of information. Their home page just has this on it:
7170 BTC got stolen from our cold wallet in this transaction:720 BTC bounty for chasing it back.All wallets have been shut down and withdrawals of the unaffected coins will be arranged later.
Sources
HitBTC
Status: Speculative
Coins Lost: Unknown
There isn't a ton of information on HitBTC just yet, it's mostly just speculation. HitBTC has not released any information yet, but users are reporting that withdrawls are not possible due to 'a lack of funds'.
Sources
i heard somewhere 300 million in Fiat was hacked-no reward though
ReplyDeleteI think you're clear to forget about BitCoin at this point, Robert.
ReplyDeleteNobody with an objective viewpoint could expect it to amount to anything at this point. The concept may still have legs but it's going to need complete rebranding.
Funds stolen from cold wallet. Only three possibilities.
ReplyDeleteFirst, and most likely is that the wallet wasn't really cold. Second possibility is that it was in inside job. Third, and most ominous (and least likely) , is that hackers have figured out a way to hack into bitcoin cold wallets, which means that they can hack into any wallet. If this is the case the value of bitcoin is going straight to zero.
It doesn't make much sense to talk about bitcoin without separating the currency from the payment system. RW's comments seem targeted to the currency, but it's unclear. Bitcoin the currency is looking pretty ugly at the moment. But regarding the payment system, it would be unfortunate if we came away from this without any innovation in that area. Is anybody at all interested in the ability to instantly send money anywhere in the world for pennies instead of say 20$ (after spending 20 minutes with a bank rep who is filling out forms whose purpose is to allow government regulators to suppress the free exchange of goods & services)
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