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Bitcoin Exchange Bitfinex Says It Was Hacked, Roughly $60M Stolen (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the security-breach dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Hong Kong-based digital currency exchange Bitfinex said late on Tuesday it has suspended trading on its exchange after it discovered a security breach, according to a company statement on its website. The company said it has also suspended deposits and withdrawals of digital currencies from the exchange. "We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen," the company said. "We are undertaking a review to determine which users have been affected by the breach. While we conduct this initial investigation and secure our environment, bitfinex.com will be taken down and the maintenance page will be left up." The company said it has reported the theft to law enforcement. It said it has not yet determined the value of digital currencies stolen from customer accounts. CoinDesk reports that the company confirmed roughly 120,000 BTC (more than $60 million) has been stolen via social media. "In response, bitcoin prices fell to $560.16 by 19:30 UTC, $530 by 23:30 and $480 at press time, CoinDesk USD Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) data reveals," reports CoinDesk. "This price was roughly 20% lower than the day's opening of $607.37 and 27% below the high of $658.28 reached on Saturday, July 30th, when the digital currency began pushing lower."

1 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Re:We were hacked, honest by chris2net23 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've never lost any BitCoins. People are just stupid. Stop handing your BitCoins over to third parties. This isn't an issue with BitCoins. It's an issue with stupid. I store my BitCoins on *MY* computer. Not someone else's computer. I have some control over the level of security I wish to maintain. Now I don't run Apple's OS X or Microsoft's Windows OS so it's not like I am taking a big risk here. It's not that you can't compromise GNU/Linux... but the reality is I don't install random software on my computer either. I stick to which has been evaluated by the experts and is properly or semi-properly maintained.