Hackers Steal Over $65 Million from the Bitcoin Network
Bitfinex, a company from Hong Kong specialized in the management of virtual currency, revealed today that a security flaw in its platforms allowed 119,756 Bitcoin coins to be stolen. This hacking caused the company, one of the industry's largest in the entire world, a loss of $65.8 million.
The company announced, in a statement on its website, the discovery of a breach in its security systems, and so was forced to suspend trading of virtual currencies on Tuesday and to freeze the deposits of their clients. The statement read:
"We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our customers had their bitcoins stolen."
The theft has been reported to the authorities by Bitfinex and, also according to the company, other virtual currencies independent from Bitcoin were not affected by this cybercrime. After the hack, Bitcoin's value on the Tokyo Stock Exchange dropped more than 5%.
This theft is quite similar to what occurred in 2014 against Mt Gox, a Japanese company responsible for trading Bitcoins, where the recorded loss was around $650 million with the stealing of this currency, developed by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Such an episode is an important reminder of the dangers we all are subjected to when using the Internet. It is important to protect ourselves, especially from the huge problem of identity theft, happening to thousands of people every day.
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