Cryptocurrency exchange Bancor has suffered ‘security breach,’ theft of $13.5 million worth of digital tokens. Israeli company founded in 2017 said a cryptocurrency wallet on its network had been breached and $12.5 million worth of ethereum and $1 million worth token Pundi X have been stolen. The company said that “no user wallets have been compromised in the attack.”
A Twitter post confirmed the security breach and company has halted its operations, which it says is particularly to allow investigative work. The company further said that “We look forward to being back online as soon as possible”
This morning (CEST) Bancor experienced a security breach. No user wallets were compromised. To complete the investigation, we have moved to maintenance and will be releasing a more detailed report shortly. We look forward to being back online as soon as possible.
— Bancor (@Bancor) July 9, 2018
Currently, the platform’s homepage is redirecting to a maintenance message which says that company is doing some maintenance and will be back online soon. According to CoinMarketCap, Ethereum has shed almost 7.7% of its value in the last 24 hours while Pundi X is down nearly 15%. The company further tweeted a statement
Here is the latest update on the recent security breach: pic.twitter.com/JroypFvBri
— Bancor (@Bancor) July 9, 2018
Company also assured that it does not hold clients’ assets and their wallet and funds are always safe, secure and under their possession on the blockchain at all times. Bancor was founded in 2017 and became popular after raising $153 mln in ETH in three hours during its Initial Coin Offering (ICO). Few days ago, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum had heavily criticized centralized exchanges saying he “hopes they burn in Hell.”
The details of the breach are still being investigated. According to a report by Coindesk, Bancor’s head of communications Nate Hindman said that,
“We were able to freeze the stolen BNT, limiting the damage to the Bancor ecosystem from the theft. The ability to freeze tokens was built into the Bancor Protocol to be used in an extreme situation to recover from a security breach, allowing Bancor to effectively stop the thief from running away with the stolen tokens,”
The company further said that, it is not possible to freeze the ETH or any other stolen tokens. However, it is now working with dozens of cryptocurrency exchanges to trace the stolen funds and make it more difficult for the thief to liquidate them.
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