Cryptocurrency mining marketplace has confirmed that it has been the victim of a hack that has resulted in the theft of over 4,700 BTC.
This equates to over $70 million worth of bitcoin being emptied from the sites wallet.
In an official statement made on its website, the company said:
“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.”
NiceHash CEO Marko Kobal later provided an update to this statement on Facebook. The attack apparently began early in the morning of 6 December, with the comprise coming from an employee’s computer. Funds began to be moved out of the company accounts at around 3:34 am CET.
Coordinated and sophisticated
According to Kobal, the attack appeared to “incredibly coordinated and highly sophisticated”. He could not offer up any more details as the company and the authorities are currently conducting their own analysis of what happened.
Kobal and the sites administrators also did not mention whether any funds from user wallets had been taken, but urged users to change their passwords.
The rise in popularity of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general has led to an increase in attention from hackers. Anti-malware software company Malwarebytes recently commented that it had stopped almost 250 million attempts to install coin-mining software on PCs in a single month.
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