The Russian cryptocurrency exchange Livecoin hacked on Christmas Eve

Russian cryptocurrency exchange Livecoin was compromised on Christmas Eve, hackers breached its network and gained control of some of its servers.

The Russian cryptocurrency exchange was hacked on Christmas Eve, it published a message on its website warning customers to stop using its services.

“Dear clients, we ask you to stop using our service in all meanings: don’t deposit funds, don’t trade, don’t use API. We are under 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.” reads the message published on the website. “Our news channels were compromised as well. At the moment, we partially control frontend, and so we’re able to place this announcement. We’re fighting hard to get back our servers, nodes and funds, we’re working 24/7. News and next update will come up in the next few days. We’re working in contact with local police authorities. We really do our best to overcome this issue.”

The administrators of the platforms informed its customers to have lost control of some of its servers, the attack was not opportunistic, it appears to be well planned.

The attack took place nighttime, between December 23 and December 24, the attackers modified exchange rates to absurd values (15 times their ordinary values).

The Bitcoin exchange rate was set to over $450,000/BTC, while the value of ETH was increased from $600/ETH up to $15,000

Someone speculate that both EXMO and Livecoin exchanges were hacked by the same attackers due to the use of the same wallet 1A4PXZE5j8v7UuapYckq6fSegmY5i8uUyq.

Users are recommended to stop depositing funds and making transactions.

Livecoin said it notified local law enforcement.

Once pumped out the exchange rates, the attackers began cashing out accounts, making huge profits.

The Cryptocurrency exchange notified the security breach to local law enforcement.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Livecoin)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.