Russian cryptocurrency exchange Livecoin has announced it was hacked and lost control of some of its servers, warning customers to stop using its services, as cybercriminals modified exchange rates to 10-15 times their normal values.
Livecoin is ranked as the 173rd cryptocurrency exchange on the internet, with roughly $16 million in daily transactions.
The company posted the message on its official website. The attack appeared to have occured on the night between December 23 and December 24.
“Hackers appear to have taken control of the Livecoin infrastructure and then proceeded to modify the exchange rates to gigantic and unrealistic values,” reports ZDNet.
The hackers tweaked the exchange rate for Bitcoin from the regular $23,000/BTC to more than $450,000/BTC, Ether grew from $600/ETH to $15,000, and Ripple price increased from $0.27/XRP to more than $17/XRP.
Livecoin described the incident as a “carefully planned attack, which has been prepared, as we assume, over the last few months.”
“We lost control of all of our servers, backend and nodes. Thus, we were not able to stop our service in time. Our news channels were compromised as well,” the company said in the message.
–IANS
na/
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dear Reader,
Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.
We, however, have a request.
As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.
Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.
Digital Editor