Posted on July 31, 2018 at 7:21 PM
Another ICO Attack Sees Millions Stolen by Hackers
This year’s increase in cryptocurrency project hacks has just claimed another victim, and this time, the target was KickICO, a new ICO support platform.
Yet another crypto hack
In a new crypto hack, the project called KickICO has seen another large theft. According to the statement published on the Medium page belonging to the project, the hack occurred on July 26 at 09:04 UTC and the attackers managed to get away with $7.7 million, which is around 70 million KickCoin (KICK)
The security breach occurred after the hackers managed to access the KickICO’s KickCoin account. The attackers then took control of the smart contract through the use of a private key, which let them siphon millions of coins from users’ wallets.
After they received total access to the smart contract in question, the attackers were able to replace up to 40 real addresses with fake ones, which have contained the same exact amount of KICK coins. Following the replacement, they transferred these coins from various different accounts, after which they completely destroyed the addresses, thus deleting any trace of their actions.
Interestingly enough, the attackers did not alter KICK’s total coin supply, hoping that this strategy would help them avoid discovery. Soon enough, the team behind KICK started receiving numerous complaints from the victims who have noticed that their wallets have been emptied. One victim of the attack, in particular, lost up to $800,000 in KICK tokens.
Following the complaints, the team managed to once again gain access to the smart contract through the replacement of the private key that was confirmed to be compromised. The team replaced the key in the cold wallet, thus protecting their network, as well as whatever funds were left in their customers’ possession.
Hacked accounts will receive a full refund
Around 40 accounts were impacted by the attack, all of which will receive a refund in order to cover the lost funds, according to the company’s statement. Additionally, all 40 accounts were promised to be completely recreated, as an additional security measure. The first step, according to thee KickICO team, is for the affected users to contact the team via email.
Anti Danilevski, the company’s CEO, confirmed that the company will return the exact amount of stolen tokens to the rightful owners. He then proceeded to apologize for the security breach, stating that the situation is, once again, under full control of the team.
This marks only the latest blockchain-related project that was attacked and robbed by experienced hacking teams. Another large hack happened only two weeks earlier when a decentralized exchange called Bancor lost $23.5 million.
One interesting thing regarding the hack is the reaction of KickCoin itself. Despite the loss of 70 million KICK tokens, the company reacted rather positively. In the last 48 hours, the coin managed to remain in the green and has even managed to gain over 5% in that time. Currently, KICK’s value is at around $0.119851, with the coin holding the rank of 126 as per CoinMarketCap.
