[Updated w/ Statement NH] NiceHash breached, resulting in a loss of $60 Million Dollars

[ItsMitch]

Forenote: Updated the sources with better links & more reputable links. 

Story coming in from the WikiTribune and TweakTown, Bitcoin miners suffered a devastating loss according to several outlets when Bitcoin site NiceHash went suddenly down for Maintenance, however people started to notice that their bitcoin wallets was being drained and the money was eventually tracked down to a single bitcoin account which is currently (at the time of posting) 4,736BTC and his BTC account is in this as well. And users are reporting that they're no longer getting customer support via their ticket system - Reddit users. 

Quote

 

The website of NiceHash, a cryptocurrency mining marketplace, says it is currently down for maintenance but some NH users have taken to Reddit and Twitter to speculate the site may have been hacked. Others say the marketplace is down for maintenance and that the site will soon be back up.

WikiTribune has been in contact with NiceHash, which said that it is “assessing the situation and working with the authorities. We’ll issue a public statement shortly.”

NiceHash is a place for users to buy ‘hashing power,’ that is computing power for mining different cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. On Tuesday, the price of Bitcoin surged to $12,000, as reported by CNBC.

 

It seems very concerning that they go to "Maintenance" just when the price of BTC surges through the roof. Well, whoever hacked and or stole it is a VERY wealthy person and he'll most likely get away with it too. Nice Hash's last statement was on Twitter with the following tweets several hours ago and the fact that the CEO said they're working with the authorities over some simple "Maintenance"

For my personal thoughts on this, well, I don't mine BTC at all for this very reason, too risky personally. Go discuss! I WOULD LINK REDDIT STUFF BUT REDDIT IS DOWN BTWWWWWWW

 

STATEMENT FROM NH

Quote

 

Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website. We are currently investigating the nature of the incident and, as a result, we are stopping all operations for the next 24 hours. Importantly, our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of BTC taken. Clearly, this is a matter of deep concern and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days. In addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency. We are fully committed to restoring the NiceHash service with the highest security measures at the earliest opportunity. We would not exist without our devoted buyers and miners all around the globe. We understand that you will have a lot of questions, and we ask for patience and understanding while we investigate the causes and find the appropriate solutions for the future of the service. We will endeavour to update you at regular intervals. While the full scope of what happened is not yet known, we recommend, as a precaution, that you change your online passwords.

 

 

We are truly sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused and are committing every resource towards solving this issue as soon as possible.

 

Sources https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-nicehash/digital-currency-exchange-nicehash-says-bitcoin-worth-nearly-64-million-hacked-idUSKBN1E10AQ | https://www.wikitribune.com/story/2017/12/06/technology/cryptocurrency-site-nicehash-confirms-hack/26595/ 

 

Edited December 7, 2017 by SC2Mitch
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[The Benjamins]

people need to learn to not use Cypto currencies like Fiat, you shouldn't use a service like a bank, keep your coins in your personal wallet that only you manage. only use these services as a middle man like mine, then withdraw regularly or for a exchange deposit, exchange withdraw.

 

I keep all my Crypto in personally controlled wallets. you can only blame yourself if you lose money.

[ItsMitch]

1 minute ago, The Benjamins said:

people need to learn to not use Cypto currencies like Fiat, you shouldn't use a service like a bank, keep your coins in your personal wallet that only you manage. only use these services as a middle man like mine, then withdraw regularly or for a exchange deposit, exchange withdraw.

 

I keep all my Crypto in personally controlled wallets. you can only blame yourself if you lose money.

Yeah I thought people would at least use their heads a little, considering how unstable BTC is and how volatile it is, cmon people use your head. 

[The Benjamins]

1 minute ago, SC2Mitch said:

Yeah I thought people would at least use their heads a little, considering how unstable BTC is and how volatile it is, cmon people use your head. 

well a good way to look at it is do you let your friend hold on to your real life wallet for long periods of time?

 

its so simple to set up a day to day wallet on a phone, and a cold storage wallet (paper wallet) in a safe or something. and have a written back up in a other location like a safety deposit box. it takes 5 min to do.

[TimeOmnivore]

7 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

Yeah I thought people would at least use their heads a little, considering how unstable BTC is and how volatile it is, cmon people use your head. 

I think another problem is that there are a lot of people who are just now getting into bitcoin right now because of all the recent news and hype over its price continuously going up, so there are a lot of newcomers who don't truly understand what they're dealing with and make these kinds of stupid mistakes. Which sucks for them, but if you're investing serious money into this, you really have a responsibility to yourself to figure out what the best practices are and how not to get screwed over because of other people.

[Matu20]

Crypto is new, problems will happen, people need to get used to the new system.

[Dissitesuxba11s]

What a terrible time to lose some Bitcoin now that it is above $13,000.

[Damascus]

@The Benjamins having cold storage is vital, even if your house burns to the ground you still have that resource.  

[knightslugger]

6 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

Yeah I thought people would at least use their heads a little, considering how unstable BTC is and how volatile it is, cmon people use your head. 

The only thing is that NH pays out to wallets they own the keys to every day so long as the balance is over .001BTC. If you have your mining rewards sent to an external wallet, they only pay out once a week (on a friday) for balances over .01BTC. I'm guessing that the theft is the plundering of that big wallet which NH uses to pay out share rewards that builds up in a week's time, as well as any wallets NH had the private keys to and pilfered those as well.

 

God damn shame. really is.

[ItsMitch]

Throwing it out there, what are the odds that money will be returned or nada. 

[The Benjamins]

3 minutes ago, Damascus said:

@The Benjamins having cold storage is vital, even if your house burns to the ground you still have that resource.  

have it in at least 2 locations.

 

their are other things you can do is a 3 key wallet were you need at least 2 keys to do a transfer so you keep you cold storage in you house, your parents house, and a bank so it crazy hard for some to steel it and if one locations gets destroyed you can still move your money.

you can also use these for a committee held fund.

[The Benjamins]

2 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

Throwing it out there, what are the odds that money will be returned or nada. 

money that was stolen, unlikely. if NiceHash is smart they would have a rainy day fund for something like this to pay back what they can.

[raphidy]

Welp, lost a week worth of btc, not that mad. GG well played "hacker".

[knightslugger]

Just now, raphidy said:

Welp, lost a week worth of btc, not that mad. GG well played "hacker".

lost about .015BTC myself. This will sink NH for me in the future. i will never use their pools again.

[Cyracus]

23 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

well a good way to look at it is do you let your friend hold on to your real life wallet for long periods of time?

more like, do you give random strangers your wallet with up to thousands of dollars in it and just trust that you'll get it back with everything in it whenever you want?

[The Benjamins]

4 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

lost about .015BTC myself. This will sink NH for me in the future. i will never use their pools again.

why didn't you move it to a personal wallet?

[knightslugger]

1 minute ago, The Benjamins said:

why didn't you move it to a personal wallet?

I didn't get paid yet. i don't use NH's wallet so i don't get paid every day. I get paid once a week just like just about everyone else.

[ItsMitch]

STATEMENT FROM NICEHASH 

Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website. We are currently investigating the nature of the incident and, as a result, we are stopping all operations for the next 24 hours. Importantly, our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of BTC taken. Clearly, this is a matter of deep concern and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days. In addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency. We are fully committed to restoring the NiceHash service with the highest security measures at the earliest opportunity. We would not exist without our devoted buyers and miners all around the globe. We understand that you will have a lot of questions, and we ask for patience and understanding while we investigate the causes and find the appropriate solutions for the future of the service. We will endeavour to update you at regular intervals. While the full scope of what happened is not yet known, we recommend, as a precaution, that you change your online passwords.

We are truly sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused and are committing every resource towards solving this issue as soon as possible.

[The Benjamins]

1 minute ago, knightslugger said:

I didn't get paid yet. i don't use NH's wallet so i don't get paid every day. I get paid once a week just like just about everyone else.

fair reason, I don't know the pay out rates. I never liked how slow they were.

[ItsMitch]

@GamingRadar101 Feels Bad Man

[knightslugger]

20 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

fair reason, I don't know the pay out rates. I never liked how slow they were.

you can get paid out daily if you use their wallets, but then you don't own the private keys so the wallet really isn't yours. you'd have to transfer it PAY GAS to an external wallet, and then transfer it PAY GAS again to a cold wallet. lots of knobing around, but it certainly changes the way i look at payout schedules.

[RadiatingLight]

After Mt. Gox, (huge coin exchange that got hacked and all money stolen) why would anyone keep their BTC on a wallet that isn't theirs?

 

[Nup]

0.001 lost. about 20 euro, it was happily gotten while keeping things warm.

[BuckGup]

Sick I lost $380. Was going to buy Christmas presents for people with that. Way to ruin the holidays

[mikegray]

Huh. 

 

On the downside, that's about $120 worth of mining gone. My son bought a 1070 last summer ($400), and I bought a used 1080 Ti about 3 months back ($650). They're both for gaming, and (I think) completely worth what I paid. We love gaming! But I've also been having them mine over NH when not otherwise engaged. Too bad that I hadn't had a payout (to my external wallet) for a few weeks. Assuming NH gets back on its feet again, I'll have to look into having my payments sent a little more often.

 

Still ... easy come, easy go. Add in some mining I did with my old card, and I'm actually pretty close to break-even on the new GTXs. Once you add in the 1/3 of a Bitcoin I bought back in March when it dipped under 1000.- ... well ... let's just say I'd be an idiot to complain too much. (Sure: it would be nice to have bought a whole lot more than $300 back then - but I dropped an amount I could lose without having nightmares. If BTC falls to 0 tomorrow, I'm still cool.)