Russian cryptocurrency exchange was hacked, with hackers regulating the levels of cryptocurrencies traded on the service to change to earn quick profits.
The hack happened over the night of December 23-24. The exchange posted on its site on Christmas Eve that the service had been under the “carefully designed” attack which they suggested could have been planned “over the past few months. ”
In the hack, the company lost control of all servers, back end and nodes along with “new channels,” apparently referring to social media accounts. Messengers were asked to stop using the service, including not investing money, trading or using the site’s application programming interface.
A hack of a cryptocurrency exchange would typically involve the theft of a cryptocurrency from a hot wallet. That may have happened here too, but where things get weird is that the hackers changed the exchange rates offered on cryptocurrencies. ZDNet reported that those behind the attack set the exchange rate for bitcoin to $ 450,000, Ethereum to $ 15,000 and XRP to $ 17. After changing the exchange rates, the hackers began to crack out accounts, generating profits in the process.
It is also strange how the money was implemented, leaving a number of questions. Since the hackers are said to have withdrawn after the inflated exchange rates, did they withdraw money or transfer amounts to other cryptocurrencies? If they withdrew with money, which would seem like one way, how did they manage to get those sums?
Livecoin is not a particularly large exchange. The site, before being dragged down, was listed as the 173rd largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by size. According to Coindesk, the exchange averaged $ 50 million in transactions per day before rising to $ 805 million when the hack first occurred.
Bundles of cryptocurrency exchanges used to be a dozen dozen just a few years ago but have fallen apart as many companies have taken their cybersecurity actions together. That said, they are still there and with bitcoin surging to record high rates, there is no doubt that investors are paying more attention to the sector.
Recent hacks included the theft of around $ 150 million from Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin in September and the hack and theft of approximately $ 10 million in cryptocurrency from EXMO Exchange Ltd. last week.
Image: Livecoin
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