The Bancor project has been hit with a massive setback over the past few hours. After a successful launch months ago, it now appears the project is dealing with a security breach. As such, close to $12.5m worth of Ether has been stolen, as well as $11m in other tokens.
Bancor Security Breach is Troublesome
For Bancor, addressing this security breach will prove to be quite a challenge. At this point, it remains unclear how this hack occurred and how the guilty party was able to steal so much money without raising any alarms.
One wallet that was used to upgrade various Bancor smart contracts was compromised and deployed for withdrawing all of the stolen funds.
More Details Regarding the Matter
So far, there has been a confirmed heist of $12.5m worth of Ethereum. If that wasn’t bothersome enough, there is also a theft of 3.2 million Bancor Network Tokens, valued at roughly $10m. To top it all off, 229.356m NPXS tokens valued at $1m have also gone missing.
All of this goes to show that the wallet which was used had vast access to different currencies and aspects of the Bancor network to successfully complete these transactions without raising immediate red flags.
Aftermath
Although the stolen BNT has been frozen, the other currencies are still being controlled by the hacker. The Bancor Protocol has a built-in feature to freeze specific token transfers if they suspect illegal activity is taking place. While such a security feature also highlights the centralized nature of Bancor itself, it is a worthwhile feature at this time.
Also worth mentioning is that freezing the stolen ETH or NPXS is impossible right now, although most cryptocurrency exchanges have been notified about the theft.
Whether or not any of the stolen funds will be recovered remains rather unclear. However, if previous incidents are any indication, it seems very unlikely that the tokens will be returned to their rightful owners.
Final Thoughts
Thefts and security incidents are nothing new in the world of cryptocurrency. Such issues happen on a regular basis, and they mainly seem to affect cryptocurrency exchanges and ICO projects. Since Bancor was a very successful initial coin offering, no one will be surprised to see criminals purposefully attack this project again– especially in its current state.
Rest assured this will not be the last incident of cryptocurrency being stolen in 2018.
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