Let's not count in US Dollars, Bitcoin price is just stubborn, continuously hiking up. As you're informed about the NiceHash robbery, 4700 bitcoins snatched away by hackers. If you still don't know, just Google "NiceHash". Nothing more. The first page(or further) of search results is filled with the issue.
When I visited the website Wednesday(just to test out NH), it said it was under maintenance. Well, it's a common thing, I'd better check letter. Until they said on Facebook they've a security breach and stopping all operations for next 24 hours, and their BTC wallet has been emptied. My Luck! Good thing I never tried it before. I saved myself without attempting.
However, two of the founder of NiceHash was seen live on Facebook(@NiceHash) today with the scope of apology, their face was dark with guilt, as you can witness. The CEO (Marko Kobal) described the situation. Claiming that the attacking IP came from outside the European Union. He described the timeline of attack attempt stages. He also demanded all of the miner's support.
Another Facebook page with the same name, tends to be the support page(@NiceHashSupport) claimed that only 14% of the total coins were stolen, and the rest 86% were sent to a safe storage. They said they're even trying to restore the stolen coins(man, how's that possible?). Good to say, this page has only 1k followers, compared to 34k of the first one. And just popped up recently. What are you thinking so far? It has higher chance to be FAKE!
Back to the live video, the another guy, Matjaž Škorjanc, who was the CTO and mostly remained silent, has a history of giving birth to a malware named Mariposa Botnet and imprisonment. Mariposa Botnet(Butterfly bot), which was founded in 2008, was involved in cyberscanning and DDoS attacks. And involvement of Matjaž? According to Wikipedia:
On 18 July 2010, Matjaž Škorjanc (alias: Iserdo), the creator of the "Butterfly bot" malware, was arrested in Maribor by Slovenian police for the first time, but released due to lack of evidence. He was arrested again in October 2011. In December 2013 Škorjanc was convicted in Slovenia of "creating a malicious computer program for hacking information systems, assisting in wrongdoings and money laundering." He was sentenced to 4 years and 10 months imprisonment and fined €3,000 ($4,100). The court also ordered the seizure of Škorjanc's property acquired with the proceeds of crime. After he appealed the verdict his fine was in February 2015 raised for additional 25,000 EUR.
Looks like he wanted to get another life by co-founding NiceHash. But stop! Don't go too excited. There's still a smog revolving around. There isn't any confirmation whether the criminal is the same guy on the live video. But this source says so. Don't forget to translate it. If you don't know Slovenian.
Thinking nicehash.exe has a sidejob of being a keylogger? It can be.
Now you are aware about the hack confirmation and Matjaž's 50-50 chance of being a cybercriminal. Now, if you're a user of NiceHash, you've to ways open:
- Give up and stop mining with them.
- Deal with it. Get up with hope and continue mining, only if they resume their service.
You can witness people continuosly crying and blaming NiceHash in the comment section under the FB live video. What happened to their effort and electricity consumption? Went in vain? It's normal. It's like people ranting after losing all of their money in a local bank robbery. They're now demanding compensation. You know NiceHash can't do that since "big daddy" snatched them away. If you've contributed mining with them & lost, I feel sorry for you. I'm not opposing NiceHash or any of their users. Just Informing. The decision's up to you. Please share your thoughts.