Besides that, we’ve long known that just as blockchains have unique security features, they have unique vulnerabilities. Blockchains are particularly attractive to thieves because fraudulent transactions can’t be reversed as they often can be in the traditional financial system. Sophisticated cybercrime organizations are now doing it too: analytics firm Chainalysis recently said that just two groups, both of which are apparently still active, may have stolen a combined $1 billion from exchanges. These are not just opportunistic lone attackers, either. In total, hackers have stolen nearly $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency since the beginning of 2017, mostly from exchanges, and that’s just what has been revealed publicly. But the so-called 51% attack against Ethereum Classic was just the latest in a series of recent attacks on blockchains that have heightened the stakes for the nascent industry. Just a year ago, this nightmare scenario was mostly theoretical. But a second popular exchange, Gate.io, has admitted it wasn’t so lucky, losing around $200,000 to the attacker (who, strangely, returned half of it days later). Coinbase claims that no currency was actually stolen from any of its accounts.
That made it possible to spend the same cryptocurrency more than once-known as “double spends.” The attacker was spotted pulling this off to the tune of $1.1 million. Its blockchain, the history of all its transactions, was under attack.Īn attacker had somehow gained control of more than half of the network’s computing power and was using it to rewrite the transaction history. Early last month, the security team at Coinbase noticed something strange going on in Ethereum Classic, one of the cryptocurrencies people can buy and sell using Coinbase’s popular exchange platform.
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