Cryptopia Attacked by Hackers a Third Time, Elementus Agency: Users Keep Depositing into Vulnerable Wallets
On Thursday, Feb 28, news reports came in saying that the New Zealand-based Cryptopia exchange has been hit by hackers for the third time. The culprits merely transferred around $30,000 - $40,000 in ETH from the wallets they had attacked previously.
Users keep depositing into the vulnerable wallets
The CEO of the DLT analytical startup Elementus, Max Galka, has commented on this new case, saying that this time hackers have stolen less than in the two previous attacks.
However, while Cryptopia wallets are located on old servers, they seem to still be open to the cyber criminals but for some reason, traders keep putting money on them, even despite the warning of the exchange not to.
Besides, this story has received massive coverage in the media recently, so Cryptopia users should be well aware of what is going on.
As long as users keep adding crypto to their wallets, says Max Galka, hackers will keep taking that money.
Cryptopia keeps improving its security measures
The other day, the platform made a post on Twitter saying that 24 percent of their old wallets are now placed on new servers with higher security. Previously, the exchange reported that they are checking every wallet of theirs for bugs and then securing it, one by one.
Update: We have transitioned 24% of all wallets to our new secure servers. Once the read only site is online, we will be keeping users up to date on which wallets have been checked and secured via the coin info page.
— Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) March 1, 2019
Hackers are selling the stolen crypto
Previously, the Elementus agency reported on social media that the unknown cyber criminals have sold part of the stolen crypto on the EtherDelta exchange, converting coins into $3.2 mln.
Now, this figure has reached nearly $4 mln.
Cryptopia update
— Elementus (@elementus_io) February 4, 2019
As of this morning, the hackers have liquidated $3.2m in tokens, with the bulk of that going to Etherdelta pic.twitter.com/QVbb8mSszX
How much has been stolen all in all
When the exchange was attacked for the first time back in January, hackers got hold of around $16 mln in ETH and other ERC20 tokens. BTC was not counted, though, so the damage was bigger.
During the next hack, Cryptopia lost nearly $180,000 in Ethereum from 7,000 wallets.
It was then that Elementus made the conclusion that Cryptopia had lost access to the wallets’ private keys to the hackers.