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The top Ten Crypto Hacks in History compilation is here. Cryptocurrency exchanges have suffered massive hack attacks, leading to huge losses to the exchange and its customers, which leads to a considerable loss of customers generally and, in turn, loss of funds. Some of the hacked exchanges turned to use investment funds to lessen the attack of the hack.
Below are ten crypto hacks and the effect on the exchange and its clients.
1. MT.GOX HACK
MT.GOT is a bitcoin exchange based in Japan. As of 2011, it was the largest bitcoin exchange globally, handling over 70% of all bitcoin transactions worldwide. Still, by the end of 2014, it went bankrupt .victims of the massive hack lost about 740,000 bitcoins (about 6% of the total bitcoin at as then), valued at an equivalent of $460 million and over $8 billion in August 2020.
Investigations of the 2014 hack revealed that Mt.Gox’s private key was unencrypted and stolen back in 2011 when the exchange was first attacked. Although 200,000 were recovered, the remaining 650,000 remains missing to date.
2. COINCHECK HACK
It was founded in 2014 by president Wakata Koichi Yoshihiro, the chief operating officer of Yusuke Otsuka, and it was one of the most popular Cryptocurrency exchanges in Asia. $530 million was stolen in a coin check hack on January 26th, 2018.
Coincheck was offering bitcoin, ETHER, LISK, and NEM. In January 2018, Coincheck posted on the blog announcing NEM coin services’ suspension, and speculations arose that the exchange had been hacked. Coincheck held a high profile conference after much persuasion, and they confirmed that hackers made away with $534.8 million at that time. It was considered the largest hack in the history of any exchange. The hack was a result of poor security practices.
While MT.GOX filed for bankruptcy after the hack, Coincheck remains in business and even approved as a licensed exchange by japan’s financial services. Talk about a bounce back.
3. BITFINEX HACK
BITFINEX is a cryptocurrency exchange owned by iFinex inc. In August 2016, Bitfinex announced a piece of disturbing news that their Hong Kong-based exchange had been infiltrated and a whooping 119,756 bitcoin worth $72 million had been stolen. Today that same bitcoin is worth about $1 billion. It was the largest exchange operating in USD, so many people held accounts with BITFINEX. After the news was released, the value of bitcoin fall by 20%. BITFINEX have been able to return about 0.023% of the total stolen bitcoin
In 2019 it revealed that two Israeli brothers were responsible for the 2016 hack. Even after the hack, the company could remain in business, and they continue to work tirelessly to stay on top of cybersecurity.
4. Nicehash hack
Nicehash is a cryptocurrency mining platform that lets people offer bitcoin miners’ computing capacity to mine digital currencies. When the attack took place, the mining marketplace said it was undergoing maintenance and latter adding it was working hard to resolve the issues at hand affecting the site on Twitter
Nicehash released a press statement saying,” we are working hard to verify the precise number of BTC taken. Clearly, this is a matter of deep concern, and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days . in addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement, and we are cooperating with them as a matter of urgency. It was reported that about 60$ of the stolen $63 million worth of bitcoin was recovered and distributed
5. BITGRAIL HACK
BITGRAIL, an Italian coin exchanged owned and operated by Francesco Hirano, was attacked in February 2012, and 17 million units of Nano (XRB), the coin is formally known as RaiBlocks, went missing
An internal investigation revealed that there was an unauthorized transaction that led to the missing Nano. After Francisco firano admitting to the hack, his account on Twitter turned to attack the Nano development team over the incident, claiming that Bitgrail is pressing charges against them due to] their irresponsible behavior
In a medium post from the Nano team, firano offered a contradicting solution for the missing $170million, an option suggested by Fiorano to modify the ledger to cover up for his losses, which they claimed was not possible nor was it a direction they would ever pursue
6. ZAIF HACK
ZAIF is a japan based cryptocurrency exchange operated by the tech bureau that got hacked in September 2018, losing 6.7 million worth of cryptocurrency, including bitcoin.
It first noticed an unusual outflow of funds on the platform around 17:00 Japan time on September 14, 2018, following the suspension of asset deposit and withdrawal services.
After further investigation, it was discovered that hackers got unauthorized access to the exchanges hot wallets and stole about $60 million worth of crypto-currency
To cover up for losses, reached an agreement with a japan-listed firm called fiasco to receive a $44.5 million investment in exchange for a major share of ownership.
7. BITHUMB HACK
BITHUMB is a South Korean based cryptocurrency founded by Javier sim in 2014. it has about 8 million registered users, 1m mobile app users, making it the most influential digital currency exchange in the country; it was hacked om march 2019.About20.2 a million XRP worth about $6.2 million was moved from Bithumb’s wallet, and he exchange said that-the stolen cryptocurrency belongs to the company and also suspects that an insider aided the hacker or hackers
8. CONRAIL HACK
CONRAIL is also a South Korean back cryptocurrency exchange. It was attacked in June 2018 and lost about $40 million in altcoins, ICO-issued tokens, PUNDI X and NPXS. Conrail said that only 30% of its asset was affected of which 2/3 of them have been frozen and the rest not sure if it has been liquidated or not and the remaining 70% is stored in the cold wallet not accessible from the Internet
9. COINDASH HACK
The cryptocurrency was stolen from coin dash during their initial coin offering ICO, stealing about $7.7 million cryptocurrency from the exchange. The hackers could insert their address instead of the address coin dash provided, and a large amount of either rum was transferred to them. The ICO was meant to raise funds to expand the company, and coin dash also credited investors who sent ETH to the wrong address with the CDT amount they would have received if the sent their ETH to the correct smart contract address
In February 2018, coin dash announced that 20,0000 ETH had been sent to the company’s wallet from the hacker’s address
10. BITSTAMP HACK
Hackers targeted some employees on bitstream on skype and email. When one of the employees opened a document sent by the hackers, the system was immediately compromised, and the attachments contained obfuscated malicious VBA script which the hackers were able to hijack two servers containing the file to bitsamp’s hot wallet and passphrase over the course of that week, the hacker drained bitstamps wallet of 18,000 bitcoins as evident on the blockchain
Shortly after the attack, bitstamp went ahead to rebuild their entire trading platform and ancillary system from the ground up rather than trying to the reboot-the old system to increase security furthermore to prevent future attacks
In conclusion, exchanges can protect their platform by using end to end encryption to prevent information related to the security of cryptocurrency leaked, hacked, or stolen.
They should be top-notch security in the platform to avoid the infiltration of hackers and the loss of millions of cryptocurrency
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