Largest Crypto-Mining Exchange Confirms It Was Hacked, $62 Million In Bitcoin Stolen | Zero Hedge
Description: "Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website... our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen"
Keywords: Zero Hedge,Zerohedge,Finance,Economics,Markets,Politics,Analysis,Bitcoin,Twitter
Date: 2017-12-06T00:00:00Z

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# Largest Crypto-Mining Exchange Confirms It Was Hacked, $62 Million In Bitcoin Stolen

by Tyler Durden
Dec 6, 2017 3:38 PM
0
SHARES

Update: as @MillionsBitcoin points out....

> NiceHash wondering where your stolen bitcoins are? Here they are
> 4736 $btc stolen$usd Value: 62,729,994#bitcoin #BTC #NiceHash #bitcoinmining #Hacked pic.twitter.com/1Ajh7lDAo0

> — Bitcoin Millionaire (@MillionsBitcoin) December 6, 2017

... the total amount of bitcoins stolen from Nice Hash is 4736, or just over $62 million, and they have ended up at the following address:

* * *

Earlier

As Bitcoin explodes higher on what now appears to be constant demand out of South Korea, there were unconfirmed (at least until recently) reports that Nice Hash, the largest crypto-mining marketplace, has been hacked with over 4,000 bitcoins worth over $50 million stolen.

> NiceHash has suffered a completely unpredictable and unforeshadowed cut and run^W^W^Whack, so much for the home miners and their extensive graphics card collections https://t.co/f3muLUtPAU https://t.co/bpqRl4CTob

> — David Gerard (@davidgerard) December 6, 2017

Visits to the website over the past 13 hours were greeted with the following maintenance notice.

> Dear NiceHash user, our service is currently under maintenance.
> We are sorry for the inconvenience and please stay tuned for updates.
> Thank you for your understanding.

> — NiceHash (@NiceHashMining) December 6, 2017

According to TweakTown, there are some posts by people saying that NiceHash transferred all of the BTC sitting in miners' wallets into a single wallet before NH fully went down.

> Why is my nicehash wallet zero? I checked the transactions on a 3rd party website and my balance was zeroed out.

> — Bonus Legit (@LegitBonus) December 6, 2017

> If NiceHash were hacked, then it makes sense that the hacker pushed all of the Bitcoin into a single wallet and then transferred it to their own wallet. There's no way of getting it back if that's the case, and if that is indeed the case, there's no way NiceHash can restore money to miners' wallets. If we're talking about $50 million or more, it's going to hurt, bad.

Earlier, WklTribune reported that they've been in contact with NiceHash CEO Andrej Nabergoj, who said that NiceHash is "assessing the situation and working with the authorities. We'll have a public statement shortly".

And then, moments ago NiceCash confirming there was a security breach:

> Here is our official PRESS RELEASE about the security breach!https://t.co/yhfdjXkJwc

> — NiceHash (@NiceHashMining) December 6, 2017

From the release:

> Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website. We are currently investigating the nature of the incident and, as a result, we are stopping all operations for the next 24 hours.

> Importantly, our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of BTC taken.

> Clearly, this is a matter of deep concern and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days. In addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency.

> We are fully committed to restoring the NiceHash service with the highest security measures at the earliest opportunity.

> We would not exist without our devoted buyers and miners all around the globe. We understand that you will have a lot of questions, and we ask for patience and understanding while we investigate the causes and find the appropriate solutions for the future of the service. We will endeavour to update you at regular intervals.

And the best part:

> While the full scope of what happened is not yet known, we recommend, as a precaution, that you change your online passwords. We are truly sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused and are committing every resource towards solving this issue as soon as possible.

One wonders: if one has just had millions in bitcoin stolen, will changing the password really help?

So far Bitcoin has taken the massive hack well, and continues to rise, approaching $13,500.

The news could be negative - at least in the short-term - for companies catering to "home miners" such as Nvidia, the biggest beneficiary of the bitcoin mining euphoria.

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Cognitive Dissonance Dec 6, 2017 3:40 PM

Don’t worry. They’ll just print up some more Bitcoins to replace the stolen ones.

cossack55 Cognitive Dissonance Dec 6, 2017 3:41 PM

What size truck does one need to haul off $50M in BTC?

1835jackson cossack55 Dec 6, 2017 3:43 PM

That's a good one!

People go mad in herds and recover their senses one by one.

hedgeless_horseman 1835jackson Dec 6, 2017 3:44 PM

Keep your Crypto on a Trezor...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-11/hedgelesshorsemans-e-z-internet...

Raffie hedgeless_horseman Dec 6, 2017 3:45 PM

or Ledger... got Nano S.

Still waiting on a price on this one - https://asicvault.io/#header

BaBaBouy Raffie Dec 6, 2017 3:46 PM

Uncle SAM ???

YUNOSELL BaBaBouy Dec 6, 2017 3:48 PM

Someone also hacked my gold.....

.... and now the gold bar has quite a dent on its top.

BaBaBouy YUNOSELL Dec 6, 2017 3:49 PM

This Is Fucking Like The WHILD WHEST ~

JRobby BaBaBouy Dec 6, 2017 3:50 PM

Oh?

Assume it keeps going up anyway

wee-weed up JRobby Dec 6, 2017 3:51 PM

Poof! It's GONE!

Bush Baby wee-weed up Dec 6, 2017 3:56 PM

Coinbase site down also

Pinto Currency Bush Baby Dec 6, 2017 4:15 PM

All units be on the lookout for stolen units of um coding.

cpnscarlet Pinto Currency Dec 6, 2017 4:30 PM

Car 119! Car 119! Investigate suspicious characters leaving Best Buy with a suitcase full of electrons....

Peacefulwarrior cpnscarlet Dec 6, 2017 4:37 PM

More like "RAMPART 51"

IH8OBAMA Peacefulwarrior Dec 6, 2017 5:57 PM

3.8 million bitcoins have been lost!

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/30-billion-lost-bitcoin/

Luc X. Ifer IH8OBAMA Dec 6, 2017 6:17 PM

Well, Ethereum is in free fall collapsing - completly oposite to the reference BTC and other top alts. Warning and advice - get out of it's shit ASAP

https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/ethereum

The 1st real life application deployed on the Ethereum Blockchain managed to almost collapse it and now the proof is in that the for long mentioned scalability issues are for real and not only hate.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/03/people-have-spent-over-1m-buying-virtu...

[The game is run via a set of 5 Ethereum smart contracts written by AxiomZen, and users interact with it via their own Ethereum address. Right now the easiest way to do that is by using the Chrome extension MetaMask which gives you the ability to send and receive Ethereum directly in your browser. You then would navigate to the CryptoKitties site which is essentially an interface to interact with their smart contracts so you can buy sell and breed kittens.

Right now about 15% of all Ethereum network traffic is dedicated to the game, making it the most popular smart contract on the network. For reference, number two with about 8% of network transactions is EtherDelta, the popular decentralized token exchange.

This traffic is making it hard to play CryptoKitties, and a lot of transactions (like buying and selling cats) are taking longer than usual to process and needing multiple attempts.

Due to network congestion, we are increasing the birthing fee from 0.001 ETH to 0.002 ETH. This will ensure your kittens are born on time! The extra is needed to incentivize miners to add birthing txs to the chain. Long-term solution will be explored very soon!

— CryptoKitties (@CryptoKitties) December 3, 2017

Not only is this making it hard to play the game, but this scaling issue is a real concern for the Ethereum network in general. If one viral game that hasn’t even spread beyond the tech world can slow down the network, what happens when the blockchain expands to real world applications?]

Luc X. Ifer Luc X. Ifer Dec 6, 2017 6:22 PM

The Next CryptoKitties? The Blockchain Might Not Be Ready

[But the insanely viral trading game running on ethereum was most often cited, not as a success, but as an example of industry challenges. As put forward by developers and entrepreneurs, the world's second-largest blockchain just isn't ready to handle the buying, trading and mating of the crypto felines en masse.

As the panels proved, though, the problem is bigger than ethereum and CryptoKitties alone.

Scaling issues also influenced Earn.com's decision to create a token this year, and onstage, CEO Balaji Srinivasan spoke to a "philosophical split" in approaches to bitcoin that led to the decision.

Brian Hoffman, CEO of OB1, the startup that manages the e-commerce platform OpenBazaar, struck a similar chord in a talk in which he announced his company's plans to launch a token that will be used in conjunction with bitcoin.]

https://www.coindesk.com/token-summit-scaling-cryptokitties/

ufos8mycow Luc X. Ifer Dec 6, 2017 6:28 PM

They'll have to revise the theft report tomorrow to $62 Billion

Justin Case Pinto Currency Dec 6, 2017 7:53 PM

Deputy Barney Fife is already on it.

hedgeless_horseman Bush Baby Dec 6, 2017 4:20 PM

> Coinbase site down also

Coinbase site is up.

GDAX is up and running.

Bitcoin is up 14% since yesterday.

Escrava Isaura hedgeless_horseman Dec 6, 2017 4:32 PM

Stolen?

I go one step further:

Everyone trading BitCON could die of aids tomorrow and the general population wouldn’t even notice.

How many BitCON is worth $50 million dollars?

Zero, because you price it in dollars.

E5 Escrava Isaura Dec 6, 2017 5:08 PM

Obama murdered a teenager and no one noticed. Brazil released a bioweapon on it's own population through engineered mosquitos and none of those stupid people noticed either.

ThePhantom Bush Baby Dec 6, 2017 4:49 PM

last two times i tried to make a purchase ... coinbase goes down. maybe its me.

JethroBodien Bush Baby Dec 6, 2017 5:32 PM

Security proof. Right. LOL

Gaius Frakkin' ... wee-weed up Dec 6, 2017 3:59 PM

Why would anyone steal Bitcoin? It doesn't have any value. A Gold plated Tungsten hoarder told me so.

tmosley Gaius Frakkin' Baltar Dec 6, 2017 6:33 PM

Was the tungsten gold plated, or was the hoarder?

HisNameIsRP wee-weed up Dec 6, 2017 4:30 PM

My wallet is died

Ajax-1 wee-weed up Dec 6, 2017 7:25 PM

I guess the "NiceHash" isn't so nice after all.

insanelysane wee-weed up Dec 6, 2017 8:15 PM

For the down arrow crew:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmFo-LKHGY0

Ranger4564 insanelysane Dec 6, 2017 9:22 PM

Hehe, I just posted the same video link. I'll leave mine, It's a higher quality.

Ranger4564 wee-weed up Dec 6, 2017 9:21 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGwZVGKG30s

tmosley JRobby Dec 6, 2017 3:52 PM

If you don't hold your private keys, you don't own it.

NoDebt tmosley Dec 6, 2017 4:07 PM

NiceHash went down the drain owing me $25. I did regular sweeps into my offline wallet so no biggie for me. You want a good laugh? Go read their Facebook page right now. Holy shit!

They are DONE, obviously. They will never recover from this, nor will any of the miners owed money by them ever get a penny of what they're owed.

They used ONE FUCKING ONLINE WALLET for their entire Accounts Payable, apparently. ONE! With $58MM worth of Bitcoin in it!! In a dog-eat-dog world, they were wearing Milkbone underwear.

Oh well, on to the next. I have some hungry 1060 graphics cards ready to hash more crypto for somebody (highest bidder).

American Psycho NoDebt Dec 6, 2017 4:08 PM

and it's gone!

Sanity Bear American Psycho Dec 6, 2017 7:21 PM

and perhaps another instance of "the easiest way to rob a bitcoin exchange is to own it"

kochevnik NoDebt Dec 6, 2017 4:39 PM

Unfortunately many online miners have some incident and everything disappears. Best to remove original principal as quickly as possible so only mined coins reinvested, and original investment safe. Also with altcoins growing so fast, 300% return not so amazing. But it is 300% return in your coin, which could be much greater compared to fiat. Still year commitment to online company is generally risky. Company with close relations to mining hardware manufacturer may be safer

Twox2 NoDebt Dec 6, 2017 4:56 PM

Maybe dumb like a fox. Inside job? One wallet would make it easier...

NoDebt Twox2 Dec 6, 2017 7:34 PM

That thought has crossed a lot of minds simultaneously today.

Twox2 NoDebt Dec 6, 2017 9:40 PM

Yep.

Righttoarmbears NoDebt Dec 6, 2017 5:23 PM

GTX1070's work lovely, 8gb of on-board ram and 1,920 core.

NoDebt Righttoarmbears Dec 6, 2017 7:32 PM

I picked these 1060s up cheap on Craigslist. Have you seen the asking prices on 1080s? Holy shit! And that's even if you can find one to buy. I bet you 99.9% of the 1080s sold in the last year have gone to online miners, not to people who actually use them for "gaming".

Ranger4564 NoDebt Dec 6, 2017 9:40 PM

I bought a 1080 TI for rendering. I might buy a second. It's $800 each.

Ranger4564 Righttoarmbears Dec 6, 2017 9:39 PM

GTX 1080 TI 3584 cuda cores. But I don't know if ETH or BTC use the cuda cores of the main graphics processor. I think they use the cuda cores. I never understood people saying the 1060's were more efficient. Too few cuda cores, takes up more slots just to get the same compute power.

new game NoDebt Dec 6, 2017 5:36 PM

see-eye-ah

that was easy...

blentus NoDebt Dec 6, 2017 6:30 PM

I have 4 Ledgers and a Trezor.

And I have far far far far far far far far far (you get the idea) less than what they had in that wallet.

Darwin always wins, I guess.

francis_the_won... NoDebt Dec 6, 2017 6:30 PM

"They used ONE FUCKING ONLINE WALLET for their entire Accounts Payable, apparently."

For a second, I was going to say "nobody can be that stupid", but then I remembered I live in Kalifornia.

Ajax-1 NoDebt Dec 6, 2017 7:35 PM

What if "NiceHash" wasn't actually hacked? Consider the possibility that an insider laid the groundwork for the heist and was able to cover his/her tracks via proxy servers. It's the perfect pretextural crime. As a side note, I just checked on my gold and silver. Ahh yes, it's right where I left it and I'll sleep like a log tonight.

Mine Is Bigger JRobby Dec 6, 2017 3:55 PM

It took nearly a day for bitcoin to go from 12,000 to 13,000 becaue the stolen bitcoins were dumped on the market.

We will see 14,000 by tomorrrow morning now that the overhang is cleared./sarc

knukles Mine Is Bigger Dec 6, 2017 4:22 PM

So no different than unallocated gold, eh?

STP knukles Dec 6, 2017 5:46 PM

Ask the Libyans what happened to their gold?

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