BitGrail cryptocurrency exchange hacked; $160 million in Nano stolen

Bitgrail cryptocurrency exchange hacked; $160 million in Nano stolen

Due to the unprecedented popularity and public acceptable garnered by cryptocurrency, launching a cryptocurrency exchange has become the best way to make quick and easy money. However, in their haste to open an exchange at the earliest, companies have not paid enough attention at the provision of secure and safe trading environment, which is why traders are suffering from all sorts of security glitches off and on.

Italy based cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail that was rebranded into Nano (XRB) used to be one of the biggest trading hubs for the RaiBlocks cryptocurrency but recently it has been witnessing a downtime due to its unreliable cyber-security measures. Reportedly, the exchange has become a victim of a hack attack, which further highlighted the underlying issues affecting the cyber-security area of the BitGrail exchange.

A post on the BitGrail website revealed that the company ran a security check after which it discovered unauthorized transactions resulting in a shortfall of 17 million Nano, which is approx. $160 million as per the latest exchange rates and it is speculated that hackers might have managed to get $595 million because BitGrail has admitted that high amount of cryptocurrency is missing.

The cryptocurrency operations of the company have currently been stalled and the authorities have contacted the police to investigate the matter. BitGrail has also claimed that there weren’t any other cryptocurrency involved in the hack still all the activities including deposits and withdrawals have been suspended temporarily and the company has released a statement on its website offering “full and sincerest apologies” to its customers.

According to one Reddit user, the situation was described as follow: 

“Something that needs to be addressed is that quite a few of these “exchanges” are set up by near-college-age “devs” who are only a couple years past graduating from their javascript boot camps. There’s no governance structure, no continuity plans, no security provisions, just a couple guys who used to make websites for small businesses who decided to slap together some components and set up an exchange to get rich quick. They get in over their heads fast and don’t understand how to scale large systems, how to handle best practice governance, etc. It’s just seat-of-the-pants the whole way. There is no fucking way these amateurs should be running a service that handles this kind of money.”

12th Breach Against A Cryptocurrency Platform In Last 7 Months

1: July 4th, 2017: Bithumb hacked and 1.2 billion South Korean Won stolen.
2: July 17th, 2017: CoinDash hacked and $7 million in Ethereum stolen.
3: July 24th, 2017: Veritaseum hacked and $8.4 million in Ethereum stolen.
4: July 20, 2017: Parity Technologies hacked and $32 Million in Ethereum stolen.
5: August 22nd, 2017, Enigma marketplace hacked and $500,000 in Ethereum stolen.
6: November 19th, Tether hacked and $30 million worth of tokens stolen.
7: December 7, 2017: NiceHash hacked and $70 million stolen.
9: December 21, 2017: EtherDelta hacked and $266,789 in Ethereum stolen.
10: January 26th, 2018: Coincheck hacked and $534 Million stolen.
11: January 29th, 2018: Experty ICO hacked and $150,000 in Ethereum stolen.
12: February 3rd, 2018: BeeToken’s ICO Phishing Scam; $1M worth of Ethereum Stolen.

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