Hackers Stole $32 Million in Ethereum; 3rd Heist in 20 Days
An unknown hacker has just stolen nearly $32 million worth of Ethereum – one of the most popular and increasingly valuable cryptocurrencies – from Ethereum wallet accounts linked to at least three companies that seem to have been hacked.
This is the third Ethereum cryptocurrency heist that came out two days after an alleged hacker stole $7.4 million worth of Ether from trading platform CoinDash, and two weeks after an unknown attacker hacked into South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb and stole more than $1 Million in Ether and Bitcoins from user accounts.
On Wednesday, Smart contract coding company Parity issued a security alert, warning of a critical vulnerability in Parity's Ethereum Wallet software, which is described as "the fastest and most secure way of interacting with the Ethereum network."
Exploiting the vulnerability allowed attackers to compromise at least three accounts and steal nearly 153,000 units of Ether worth just almost US$32 million at the current price.
The attack started late Tuesday and continued on Wednesday, resulting in a total of three transactions, which can be seen on Etherscan.io. The three victims of the attack identified are: Parity says the vulnerability affected the contract used to create multi-signature Ethereum wallets in Parity version 1.5 or later, warning its users to move their Ether from their in-browser wallets to more secure accounts immediately.
White Hat Hackers Group Holds $75 Million Worth of Ethereum
Yes, 377,000 more Ether worth over $75 Million were also drained by white hat hackers.
As the attack began, a group of white hat hackers used the same exploit to drain approximately 377,000 Ether from other vulnerable wallets into holding accounts in order to protect them from black hat hackers, Coindesk reports.
The Whitehats are currently holding the rescued funds and has promised to return the funds to their owners once this security threat passed.
"The White Hat Group were made aware of a vulnerability in a specific version of a commonly used multisig contract. This vulnerability was trivial to execute, so they took the necessary action to drain every vulnerable multisig they could find as quickly as possible," White Hats wrote on Reddit.
"We will be creating another multisig for you that has the same settings as your old multisig but with the vulnerability removed and we will return your funds to you there."
The company has just released an updated version of the Parity software fixing the vulnerability.