Popular bitcoin exchange Bitfinex today urged customers to halt deposits while it investigates a suspected hack.
In a statement released this morning, the Hong Kong-based company said the keys to its hot wallet "might have been compromised". However, the majority of customers' funds would not be affected, it said.
"Although we keep over 99.5% of users' BTC deposits in secure multisig wallets, the small remaining amount in coins in our hot wallet are theoretically vulnerable to attack [...] Although this incident is unfortunate, its scale is small and will be fully absorbed by the company."
This year saw both Coinapult and Bitstamp lose funds in hot wallet thefts, with an estimated total loss of $5.4m at the time of reporting.
Currently the fourth most popular bitcoin exchange, Bitfinex's 24-hour volume stands at 13,536.71 BTC ($3.19m) A 0.5% loss on these trades works out at roughly $15,943.
Bitfinex, which recently partnered with AlphaPoint to overhaul its back-end, said it was working to create a new hot wallet for the deposits it stores online.
The exchange is expected to release further updates in the coming hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment