One of Bitcoin’s biggest exchanges, UK-based Bitstamp, has been breached, resulting in a loss of just less than 19,000 coins from one of its “operational wallets”. That’s the equivalent of $5.2 million, ”a small fraction of Bitstamp’s total Bitcoin reserves, the overwhelming majority of which are held in secure offline cold storage systems”, the firm said.
Details are thin on the ground but Bitstamp, which described itself to Forbes as the “backbone of the Bitcoin economy” last year, sent an emailed statement from CEO Nejc Kodrič that said all coins held with the company prior to 9am UTC on 5 January “are completely safe and will be honored in full”. A source with knowledge of the investigation into the attack said the company was attacked on the afternoon of 4 January and that Bitstamp would remain in complete shutdown until the service was restored “in a safe and secure manner”.
He said there were no details on the number of users affected and that figure was unlikely to be released. Despite claims that the stolen funds were already being sent, the source said there was insufficient data to show that at the current time.
“This breach represents a small fraction of Bitstamp’s total bitcoin reserves, the overwhelming majority of which are are held in secure offline cold storage systems,” Kodrič added. “We appreciate customers’ patience during this disruption of services. We are working to transfer a secure backup of the Bitstamp site onto a new safe environment and will be bringing this online in.” Customers have been told not to make deposits to previously issued Bitcoin deposit addresses.
Hackers have found weak spots in the Bitcoin ecosystem and exchanges are attractive targets, as they process significant sums, turning virtual currency into traditional money and back again. Last year saw one of the biggest exchanges, Mt. Gox, brought to its knees when an attack deprived the firm of 650,000 coins. It originally thought 850,000 was gone, worth around $450 million at the time, though it was later discovered Mt. Gox was still sitting on 200,000 coins it claimed had disappeared.
Having hit extraordinary highs last year, Bitcoin is now worth around $280 per coin, down from a heady $1000 in early 2014. Such attacks will do nothing to boost confidence around the cryptocurrency. Yet it remains the most popular virtual currency, even if the hype and its value have attenuated somewhat.
Source : http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/01/06/bitcoin-exchange-bitstamp-hacked/
