Pierluigi Paganini February 11, 2020

The Italy-based cryptocurrency exchange Altsbit announced that it has suffered a security breach that led to the theft of its customer’s funds.

Crypto-currency exchange Altsbit recently disclosed a security breach, the company claimed that hackers have stolen almost all its customers’ deposits. 

The Italian cryptocurrency trading firm disclosed the incident on February 5, only a “small part” of customer funds were not stolen because they were stored in cold wallets that are not accessible from the Internet.

Contrary to what initially declared, in an update published by the company, most of the funds were stored in the cold wallets, this means that theoretically they were not stolen and the exchange plans to return them to the customers.

“On February 5, 2020 the exchange Altsbit suffered an attack by hackers, in the attack unfortunately a certain quantity of coins were stolen from the platform. After a careful analysis we managed to understand the stolen quantities, fortunately a good part of the coins were kept on cold storage, these coins will be returned to the users of Altsbit exchange not having the possibility to compensate for these losses, they will be distributed among all users of the platform each coin will have its calculation based on the percentage that was saved during the attack ” reads a statement published by the company.

Unfortunately, Altsbit exchange declared not having the possibility to compensate for the stolen funds, for this reason, lossed will be distributed among all its users.

Altsbit determined that current verified losses are:

• BTC Lost 6,929 coins out of 14,782 – 7.853 will be returned to users. 53.10% (Refunded)
• ETH Lost 23,21 out of 32,262 – 9.052 will be returned to users. 28.06% (Refunded)
• ARRR Lost 3924082 out of 9619754 – 5695672 will be returned to users 59.20% (Refunded)
• VRSC Lost 414154 out of 852726 – 438572 will be returned to users 51.24% (Refunded)
• KMD Lost 1066 out of 48015 – 46949 will be returned to users. 97.77% (Refunded)

“The site said users who saw losses must apply for their partial refunds. The bitcoin and ether stolen were valued at around $63,000 at press time.” reported Coindesk.

Altsbit provided instruction to request a partial refund of the available funds, below a step-by-step procedure to follow:

• login to exchange
• click on “funding” at the “exchange” page top
• click on “withdraw”
• fill the address and sum (pay attention to new balance)
• fill the verification email or 2FA code
• click on “withdraw”.

The company announced that it will be terminated on May 8, 2020, after this deadline it will not be possible to receive any refund.

At the time it is not clear who is behind the attack, hacking group @LulzSec has claimed responsibility for the hack.

Some users online speculate that the incident is a coverage for an exit scam.

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Altsbit, hacking)

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