Blockchain technology is big news these days. With so many new startups and platforms developing products and services they claim will change the world, and millions of dollars of development funds thrown into the mix, unsurprisingly, some operations will fall victim to a cyber attack of one kind or another. A cast-iron, 100% guarantee of total protection is likely far off in the distant future, however it pays to be as prepared as possible, with the strongest defenses possible in place to ward off an attack. A recent incident involving trade.io surely demonstrates this.
What is trade.io?
trade.io is a customizable, blockchain-based, next-generation financial platform that claims to offer users the pinnacle in security and transparency. trade.io boasts decades of expertise in such fields as investment banking, trading & FinTech. The company aims to marry this expertise with the power and transparency of blockchain technology to revolutionize both asset trading and investment banking with a unique and secure cryptocurrency exchange.
Security Team Responds to Unusually Large Transaction
According to trade.io, On 20 October, 2018 at 08:40 EST ‘the trade.io security team was alerted to a large transaction originating from our wallet holding 50M Trade Tokens (TIO) owned by trade.io reserved for the liquidity pool. Immediately following the alert, our trade monitoring observed abnormal trading of TIO on external exchanges.’
The team immediately alerted these exchanges, KuCoin and Bancor, so that deposits, withdrawals and trading of TIO could be shut down, and investigations could begin. Publicity material for the platform credits the various internal trade.io teams with fast action to prevent the situation from becoming any worse and helping to contain the problem.
Team Contains Breach
trade.io have stated that neither its exchange nor liquidity pool were accessed and that both remain operational. Apparently, only one particular hardware wallet was affected by the breach. As a result, no user accounts were affected and no customer funds were stolen.
Preliminary investigations show that the cold storage unit wasn’t hacked, and the platform’s systems remain solid. No evidence has been found to show theft by internal staff.
trade.io mentions, ‘both KuCoin and Bancor responded promptly and are assisting trade.io in our investigation and have taken steps to quarantine the associated transactions. We are actively taking steps to further lock down the situation, and prevent any other potential impact.’
Due to this incident, platform management has made the decision to fork TIO to enhance security, with details to be made available shortly.
trade.io Give Thanks
trade.io thanked its entire team for its handling of the security breach, as well as its community of TIOnauts for their support and positive response to the event during what must have been a challenging period for the platform.
Defenses Tested
It is testament to trade.io’s defenses – not to mention its security team and general teamwork – that the breach was resisted by the platform. While trade.io would likely rather not have had to deal with this issue, the fact that it was repelled must surely give the developers some satisfaction as they go about analysing the incident from all angles and updating existing security systems.