The firm preserved its old system for investigators and adopted better security.
Major Bitcoin exchange Bitstamp reopened its virtual doors late Friday, four days after it suspended services because of an online theft of 19,000 bitcoins valued at more than $5 million.
Bitstamp, the second largest Bitcoin exchange for US dollars, moved its system to Amazon’s cloud services and added additional security features to make compromises more difficult, Bitstamp’s CEO Nejc Kodrič said in a statement on the company’s website.
“By redeploying our system from a secure backup onto entirely new hardware, we were able to preserve the evidence for a full forensic investigation of the crime,” he said. “While this decision means we have not been able to provide you with services for a number of days, we feel this extra measure of precaution was in the best interest of our customers.”
Online thieves allegedly raided Bitstamp’s operational funds, or “hot wallet,” on Sunday,compromising up to 19,000 bitcoins, valued at the time at approximately $5.2 million. The following morning, Bitstamp notified users and suspended its trading services.
The company has stressed many times that it only had a small amount of its total Bitcoin capital in its hot wallet, with the rest of the digital cash in cold storage, typically secured in an offline storage system.
Since it halted services, the company and its lead investor Pantera Capital have struggled to quickly investigate the attack and rebuild the site on new infrastructure, according to Kodrič’s statement.
“Our team has been working day and night to rebuild and restore security to the Bitstamp site so customers can resume transacting with us quickly, safely, and confidently,” he said. “Bitstamp is now fully operational, with a number of key improvements.”
The primary security improvement appears to be the use of a three-key system developed by BitGo, where conducting any Bitcoin transaction from a protected wallet requires any two of three specially created keys. Typically, the client—in this case, Bitstamp—holds two of the keys, with a third key held by BitGo.
In addition, Bitstamp moved its service to Amazon Web Services and rebuilt the system from a clean backup, the company said.
Source : http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/bitstamp-reopens-bitcoin-exchange-adds-security-precautions/
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