Bitcoin Exchange Service Gatecoin Suffers a $2m Theft

This past week there was news about a security incident within crypto-currency exchange system affecting one service based in Hong Kong that was executing assets' sale associated with Ethereum-reliant DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations).

On Friday it was reported that Gatecoin encountered one cyber assault against its digital currency-filled hot wallets which led to huge funds loss. The exchange released one fresh update suggesting that a massive two million dollars were lost, substantiating the hack.

CEO and Founder Menant of Gatecoin writes that during May 13 night HKT, the exchange spotted a few dubious transactions and instantly halted its services for conducting a probe as also for preventing any further illegitimate admission into the hot wallets of BTC and ETH.

Menant continues that the service had earlier communicated about the storage of majority of customers' crypto-asset revenues inside multi-signature cold purses. Despite so the sinister outside party carrying out the current hack managed in changing Gatecoin's system in order that deposit transfers of BTC/ETH eluded the multi-signature cold wallets while landed straight into the hot purses over the hacking time, implying that ETH fund losses went beyond the 5% restriction which the exchange implemented upon its hot wallets.

The remaining crypto-currency remained from hackers' tampering because Gatecoin had kept them within multi-signature cold purses -far more difficult to meddle with. Another service trading Bitcoin namely ShapeShift encountered one likewise event in April 2016, when hackers seized currency from the trader's hot purses.

Meanwhile, according to the exchange, it was able in identifying as well as quarantining the addresses the thieves utilized for exfiltrating the asset revenues. Four Ethereum and six Bitcoin addresses were identified. Softpedia.com posted this, May 16, 2016.

In a voluntary effort, other companies for BTC trading helped Gatecoin via keeping vigil to find any transactions carried out of these wallets as well as track the digital money that got transferred from one end to another end of the block-chain.

Significantly, assuring its clients that their funds were secure, Gatecoin said it would recompense users who lost funds from their wallets. Moreover, Menant said the DAO and Digix tokens hadn't been tampered with.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/24/2016