$140,000 In Ethereum Stolen In Wallet Hack

Yesterday, news surfaced of a large scale attack that had taken place on MyEtherWallet, during which over 200 Ethereum was stolen, to the tone of almost $140,000.

Couple of DNS servers were hijacked to resolve https://t.co/xwxRJ4H4i8 users to be redirected to a phishing site. This is not on @myetherwallet side, we are in the process of verifying which servers to get it resolved asap.

— MyEtherWallet.com (@myetherwallet) April 24, 2018

According to MyEtherWallet’s Twitter page, a number of the companies DNS servers sustained an attack which started to redirect users of myetherwallet.com to a phishing website. From this site, user data was extracted and thus, some exposed Ethereum was stolen. This is significant as once more, this hack has taken place as a result of a single vulnerability, it is essentially something that never should have happened, yet, hackers have found another small weakness which has allowed them access to a huge system. In the grand scheme of things, 200 Ethereum is not a colossal amount of money, however, risk to data and privacy here is high. Security is paramount, once again, users of a wallet have been failed by a company that should really be doing more to protect them. According to BTCManager:

“An address linked to the hack has been discovered, and it is currently tagged on Etherscan (Fake_Phishing899) as being involved in the MEW DNS hack. The address has so far conducted 180 transactions and has stolen 215 ETH currently valued at $150,000. According to a post on Reddit, there are indications that the hack may have originated from Russia.”

This highlights just how risky cryptocurrency trading is, outside of the whole volatility debate. Not only are the markets bumpy, the security of your assets really cannot be ensured. You can protect yourself from hacks such as this, using offline wallets as an alternative storage method for your assets is one way you can at least, assume your assets can’t be accessed with malicious intent. Unless you lose the wallet of course, then you’re out of luck. When using online wallets, you should take extra precautions to ensure that the website you are using is legitimate. Check SSL certificates and keep your eyes on news websites such as ours, who endeavour to inform you of hacks and attacks to ensure that you can protect yourself in a timely manner.