NiceHash Hacked – Crooks have allegedly stolen $60m worth of Bitcoin

The cryptocurrency mining market NiceHash confirmed it has fallen victim to a hacking attack that may have resulted in the loss of $60m worth of Bitcoin

Cryptocurrency companies continue to be a privileged target of hackers, the last victim in order of time is the cryptocurrency mining market NiceHash. The NiceHash marketplace allows users to buy and sell their computing cycles to mine cryptocurrency, the company confirmed it was hacked, attackers stole its entire Bitcoin wallet.

“Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website. We are currently investigating the nature of the incident and, as a result, we are stopping all operations for the next 24 hours.” reads the statement issued by NiceHash.

“Importantly, our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of BTC taken.”

The security breach has been reported to law enforcement, the company is also investigating the attack.

Even if NiceHash did not provide financial data on the security breach, it has been estimated hackers have stolen around $60m.

NiceHash declared that it is fully committed to restoring the service with the highest security measures, it doesn’t want to exit from the market due to the incident.

The company doesn’t provide further details on the hack, as a precaution it recommends users to change their online passwords.

“While the full scope of what happened is not yet known, we recommend, as a precaution, that you change your online passwords.” concludes the statement.“We are truly sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused and are committing every resource towards solving this issue as soon as possible.”

The security breach was disclosed just hours after NiceHash confirmed its website was down for maintenance.

At the time of writing, The NiceHash website still shows a maintenance page.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Bitcoin, cyber heist)

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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”.