The award of being the first crypto-hack victim of 2019 goes to Cryptopia, a New Zealand-based crypto exchange.
Yesterday, Cryptopia tweeted that the exchange was going through some “unscheduled maintenance.” This excuse kept on for the rest of the day before the exchange decided to let the world know that they were hacked.
We are currently experiencing an unscheduled maintenance, we are working to resume services as soon as possible. We will keep you updated.
— Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) January 14, 2019
Update: We are still experiencing unscheduled maintenance. The next update will be at 8am NZDT (7pm UTC)
— Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) January 14, 2019
Update: We are still experiencing unscheduled maintenance. Our team is working hard to resolve this and we will provide an update soon.
— Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) January 14, 2019
Then, finally, the announcement came. A significant amount of assets had been taken away from the exchange. Following the standard protocol, government agencies were notified and are currently looking into this matter. Till further notice, the exchange has gone into ‘maintenance mode’. The website hosts a similar banner.
Exhibit — The official notification of the hack.
— Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) January 15, 2019
Through a bit of internet sleuthing, BlockPublisher tracked a large transaction from Cryptopia to an unknown wallet. $1,176,596 of stolen funds [?] from the victim to the hackers?
48,029,306 #CENNZ (1,176,596 USD) transferred from #Cryptopia to Unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) January 13, 2019
This is the first one from the bad guys. Brace for many more.
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Photo by mahdis mousavi on Unsplash
