Following a string of recent updates on social media, the Cryptopia exchange have stated their intention to reopen a read-only version of their exchange on Monday, March 4, nearly three months after being hacked.
Update: We are aiming to have the Cryptopia site re-opened as read only by Monday.
— Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) February 28, 2019
The update came a few hours ago, confirming a string of previous updates suggesting that the reopening was at hand. This means that users will be able to see, but not “touch” their funds – or lack of funds.
Nearly 10% of the exchange’s total funds, or about $23 million worth are thought to have been stolen from the exchange, although much less of that has actually been withdrawn from tainted wallets. Two million dollars we extracted via the EtherDelta decentralized ERC-20 exchange alone, while Binance halted all transfers coming from the compromised wallets.
Many had suspected the attack of being an “inside job.” Indeed, thousands of individual private wallets on the exchange were compromised during the attack – something hard to pull off in a hack – and blockchain analytics firm Elementus concluded that the only other explanation is that Cryptopia generally lost control of a great number of their private keys.
But New Zealand police, where the exchange is based, were apparently satisfied enough during the course of their investigation to green-light Cryptopia to reopen. According to the police department, Cryptopia are in full control of their exchange again.
For users who had funds on the exchange during the event, the qualified reopening will no doubt be a bittersweet moment, as they have not had any way of knowing if their own funds were affected.
Atleast we can see how much you allowed us to lose now
— Cryptolover69 (@Cryptolover69) February 28, 2019
Security in Crypto
Despite the maturing ecosystem of cryptocurrency, the scene remains a highly risky one. Coinomi, a popular hot wallet, was yesterday found to have a significant security flaw.
One user was reported to have lost at least $60 thousand because of the vulnerability, which had the Coinomi wallet sending seed phrases to Google under a spell-checking function. Coinomi was also reported to have advised that user against publically disclosing the exploit.
