Cryptocurrency, tens millions of coins stolen: hacking into the Israeli Bancor system

headcorner (54)in #cryptocurrency • 6 years ago

The Israeli platform that enables the conversion of every cryptographic currency has suffered a security breach that allowed hackers to steal more than $ 20 million worth of coins.
The great promise of the Crypto world is supposed to bring us to a new era of decentralization, control and freedom of use in whatever currencies we want, There seems to be more work ahead. The Israeli Bancor (Bancor) platform, which allows conversion of any cryptographic currency such as Bitcoin to Token, has suffered a "security breach" in which tens of millions of dollars were stolen, forcing the company to freeze its activities.
How do you steal more than $ 20 million in one minute?
In the company's wink, Bancor tried to explain to its users what had happened: A wallet used by the company to update several smart contracts had been hacked by hackers, which attracted $ 12.5 million worth of ethereum coins, $ 1 million NPXS, and Bancor Tokens, Worth $ 10 million.
After the discovery of the breakthrough, the company was able to freeze its tokens , the BNT.

The company explains that this is a possibility that was built precisely for such extreme cases, including hacking. Thus, in fact, burglars can not move the tokens from wallet to purse and finally sell or convert them to other currencies (including "real" money), thus running away with the money. Unfortunately for the company, it can not do the same process on ethereum or other currencies, but it claims to be working with other crypto exchanges to find the stolen money, and to ensure that the hackers can not exchange it and run away with it. Meanwhile, hackers have been able to convert part of the amount through the Changelly system, which is collaborating with Bancor in an attempt to locate the stolen amount.
Company: No harm was caused to customers
The company explains that no digital wallet of customers was hacked during the incident, and after the investigation the system will resume operations, probably during the next 24 hours. Meanwhile, company officials confirm that the reason for the breach was found and corrected. All of this apparently did not suffice for Bancor's Toucan holders, who dropped their value by more than 14%.
Bancor's platform enables the conversion of any cryptographic currency, thus allowing liquidity to be quite esoteric. Last year the company held ICO, during which it raised more than $ 150 million. This was the largest amount of ICO funding at the time (until Telegram held its ICO). Bancor was founded in 2016 by Guy Ben-Artzi, CEO of the company, Galia Ben-Artzi, business development manager, Yehuda Levy, director of technological development at the company, and Eyal Herzog, product manager. They were joined by American investor Tim Draper as a consultant, and Bernard Leiter, a well-known Belgian economist.
"We are still investigating the details of the break-in and will share further information when we can do so," Bancourt said in response. We take every such case seriously and use every resource at our disposal to solve the problem. The information we know is that $ 13.5 million was stolen from Bancor. No user's wallet was exposed to the breach, and no user money was stolen.
We work with dozens of crypto exchanges to locate the stolen funds, and to make it harder for the thieves to turn the funds into liquid. In addition, we identified the security breach, solved it and are now working to restore the network as quickly as possible. We will continue to update when we can use our telegraph channel and Twitter. "