IOTA shut down over hack

The IOTA Foundation has shut down its network and requests users to close their Trinity wallets after a supposed hack. On Twitter the foundation told its working with law enforcement to investigate a coordinated attack in which an undisclosed amount of funds has been stolen.

The foundation reported that there are around ten victims, all of which have recently used the Trinity wallet. The latest update by the IOTA Foundation suggests that a flaw in an older version of the Trinity wallet is the cause of the hack.

Internal research suggests that the hackers have been able to steal seeds, which are basically the private keys to a wallet. Several of the hacked wallet owners have already been contacted. The Trinity wallet is a new addition to the IOTA network, as it was introduced last summer.

Loved and criticized

IOTA is quite a popular crypto project. This year the value of IOTA increased from 0.16 dollar to the current value of 0.31 dollar. The project has a market cap of 874 million dollars, putting it among the biggest 25 blockchain projects.

However, purists believe that IOTA is too centralized. The foundation's ability to shutdown a masternode and therefore the entire network, is proof of that. Two years ago the IOTA Foundation already had plans to remove its node from the network, but this didn't happen yet. In December 2019 the network was also shutdown for 24 hours after running into some functional problems.

Despite the criticism the IOTA Foundation is working on many projects with major mainstream brands. For example, they are working with Dell and Linux on a system for digital trust. At the same time they work with governments and city planners on self-sustaining smart cities, while they've also created an industry-focused automated marketplace for goods and services. In addition there's a partnership with Jaguar Land Rover.