Russian crypto-exchange Livecoin hacked
Hackers accessed the Russian Livecoin portal and changed its rates to 10-15 times their normal value on Xmas eve.
Russian crypto-exchange Livecoin was hacked and lost control some of its servers, warning customers to stop using its services. It is assumed that the attack happened on the night between December 23 and December 24.
After gaining control over the portal hackers changed the value rate of the coins to gigantic and cloud touching value.
Before Livecoin admins managed to gain back access to some of their systems during late December 24, the Bitcoin exchange rate had ballooned 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 admins say that it is a carefully planned hack, taking care of scrupulous details.
“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.
“At the moment, we partially control frontend, and so we’re able to place this announcement,” it added.
As it happens with most cryptocurrency hacks, several users have cried foul play and are now claiming the entire hack was an inside job.
Livecoin said it notified local law enforcement.
According to CoinMarketCap, Livecoin is ranked as the 173rd cryptocurrency exchange on the internet, with roughly $16 million in daily transactions. The site has been active since March 2014.
