TL;DR
It has been almost a full year since the largest crypto heist in the history of digital currencies, and the similar incident has occurred again, with Cryptopia Exchange being the target. Last year’s hack of Japan-based Coincheck exchange has seen the theft of around $530 in digital currencies.
According to a report published by Cryptopia, the exchange was hacked yesterday, January 14th. The exchange’s team was able to halt the attack by temp moving the platform offline. However, there is still a significant amount of damage that attackers managed to inflict.
— Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) January 15, 2019
Immediately after dealing with the attack, the team had notified relevant government agencies, such as NZ Police and High Tech Crimes Unit, who are now leading the investigation.
The attack is already classified as a major crime, which is why the exchange will have to remain offline until further notice. However, the exchange did promise to resolve the situation as quickly as possible in order to allow users to continue their daily trading routine.
The amount stolen is not currently known to the public, and it is possible that the exchange itself has yet to determine the amount that was stolen. However, a massive amount of 19,391 ETH (approximately $2.5 million) was recently transferred from Cryptopia to an unknown wallet, which might serve as an indication regarding the stolen amount.
The statement published by Cryptopia was relatively vague, with not a lot of details, which has left traders confused and worried about their funds. Many are hoping that the exchange has kept the majority of the funds in cold storage, although this is not confirmed.
The trend of hacking crypto exchanges has grown significantly in the last two years, especially after the crypto hype of late 2017. As more people and money joined the crypto industry, more of them started using exchanges, and as a result — more funds kept flowing into these platforms. Considering how difficult it is to hack and cause harm to blockchains, crypto exchanges and wallets tend to be the most likely targets for hacking attacks.
Regulators around the world recognized this issue, and have increased security requirements that exchanges have to meet. However, the attacks are still occurring, which continuously damages the reputation of exchanges, and affects users’ trust. Meanwhile, users are once again reminded that it’s better to keep their coins off the exchange and store them safely in cold storage. As been said before: Not your private keys, not your coins.