When Ethereum-based synthetic asset issuance platform Synthetix, which allows users to mint and trade synthetic currencies in a peer-to-peer fashion, lost track of more than 37 million synthetic Ether (sETH) on June 24, the company stopped all trading on its platform. While users only lost trading access for 24 hours, the event led to trades with 1,000x profits equalling $1 billion in less than an hour. The Australian-based company’s synthetic currencies provide access to the value of certain currencies, including Bitcoin and Ether. The platform says it makes it easy for users to hold Bitcoin and Ether, without needing a …

Several security vulnerabilities have been disclosed by Monero, including one that could have been exploited to steal xmr from exchanges, reports on the breach disclosure platform HackerOne revealed on July 3. The vulnerability theoretically enabled attackers to send counterfeit xmr to an exchange. Once the fraudster’s account was credited, they could then convert it into other coins and make a withdrawal, leaving the exchange out of pocket. Describing the critical breach they uncovered, the lead developer for CUT coin added: “It is our belief that the vulnerability cannot be used to "mint" real, transactable monero out of thin air.” A …

One of the most prominent crypto cybercrimes in recent years took a dramatic turn on June 23, when two Israeli brothers were arrested in connection with the 2016 Bitfinex hack and other crypto-related phishing attacks. Just shy of 120,000 Bitcoin (BTC) were stolen in the attack back in 2016, an amount initially worth $72 million, though after Bitcoin’s meteoric rise in the summer of 2019, the value of the stolen funds now amount to around $1.4 billion. Speaking to Finance Magnates, an Israeli police spokesperson said that Eli and Assaf Gigi bagged tens of millions of dollars from their activities. …

Mt. Gox founder Jed McCaleb is being sued by two traders who used the doomed exchange, court documents filed on May 19 show. Joseph Jones and Peter Steinmetz have accused the ex-CEO of fraudulently and negligently misrepresenting the exchange. The pair also allege that McCaleb was aware of “serious security risks” back in late 2010 or early 2011 — more than three years before 850,000 bitcoin (BTC) was stolen in an audacious hack. Their complaint adds: “Rather than secure the exchange, McCaleb sold a large portion of his interest in the then sole proprietorship, and provided avenues to the purchases …

Hackers took over the Twitter account of the largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom to promote a bitcoin (BTC) scam this week. The news surfaced via IT magazine Bleeping Computer on June 25. Tesco, which has almost 550,000 Twitter followers, lost control of its account and began claiming it would give away free bitcoins in return for investments. The hackers appeared to have an affinity with Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, using his avatar and changing Tesco’s handle to ‘Billgatesmsc.’ “Bitcoin is on the rise again! One day, it will without doubt replace fiat currencies,” one deleted tweet read in …

Europol, in conjunction with the United Kingdom’s South West Regional Cyber Crime Unit, the Dutch police, Eurojust, and the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA), has coordinated the arrests of six people suspected of stealing over $27 million in cryptocurrency, according to a press release on June 25. The attackers reportedly were involved in typosquatting, a fraudulent means to steal credentials by setting up a scam website with a similar name to an established one—hence the “typo” in “typosquatting”—and then recording login data. In this case, the report notes that Europol believes the hackers were able to use typosquatting to steal …

Following a recent oracle issue, asset issuance platform Synthetix will reverse the misplaced 37 million synthetic ether (sETH) in exchange for a bug bounty, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick stated on June 25. According to the statement, Synthetix has now resumed trading and transfers after the platform yesterday suffered an oracle error that led to several trades with profits of 1000x, resulting in more than $1 billion in profits in under an hour. Warwick, who is also CEO of Australia-based payment operator blueshyft, has described the details of the accident, noting that the error, which led one of APIs on the …

Two Israeli brothers have been arrested in connection with the hack of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and other crypto-related phishing attacks, finance news outlet Finance Magnates reports on June 23. An Israeli police spokesperson reportedly told Finance Magnates that Eli Gigi and his younger brother Assaf Gigi netted tens of millions of dollars. The two are suspected of being responsible for long-term systematic theft of cryptocurrencies by maliciously obtaining access to other users’ accounts. The two allegedly created credential-stealing clones of major online cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets and sent links to those phishing sites on Telegram groups and other cryptocurrency-related communities. …

The Atlantis hard fork for Ethereum Classic (ETC) has been officially set to occur at block 8,772,000 on the blockchain, according to the Ethereum Classic Improvement Protocol (ECIP) finalization call via Discord on June 20. As per the discussions in the call, the developers and contributors had previously considered putting the hard fork at block number 8.75 million, which is predicted to run on September 15. However, since the 15th is a Sunday, ETC Labs moved to increase the block number in order to have the projected update during the week, when more involved parties, such as exchanges and developers, …

The recent Firefox’s zero-day security flaw was used in attacks against major crypto exchange and wallet service Coinbase, according to a tweet from Coinbase security researcher Philip Martin posted on June 20. As Martin found, the reported critical zero-day vulnerability in Mozilla’s Firefox web browser, which was announced on June 18, has actually emerged along with another zero-day flaw that targeted Coinbase employees, meaning that there were two separate Firefox zero-day attacks. The Coinbase security expert tweeted: “On Monday, Coinbase detected & blocked an attempt by an attacker to leverage the reported 0-day, along with a separate 0-day firefox sandbox …

This article was updated to reflect that Bitrue has now acknowledged the hack of its platform. Throughout the past six months, seven crypto exchanges have reportedly seen large-scale hacking attacks to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, with the most recent platform to suffer a security breach being GateHub. As the global crypto exchange market continues to see an increasing number of security breaches leading to the loss of user funds, investors may become reluctant to rely on centralized exchanges to store funds. Bitrue hack The month of June was characterized by two unfortunate cryptocurrency thefts. On June …

The personal computers of employees at hacked Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck have allegedly been found to have been infected by a virus associated with a hacker group of Russian origin. The allegation was reported by Cointelegraph Japan on June 16. As Cointelegraph has reported, in January 2018, Coincheck suffered an industry record-breaking hack when $534 million worth of NEM was stolen from its wallets. Cointelegraph Japan cites a report from Japanese media agency Asahi Shimbun, which claims that fresh research has cast doubt on prior assumptions that the high-profile hack had been perpetrated by attackers with a North Korean connection. …