A cryptocurrency project gives away $500000 to smart hackers. The attackers could not have found a better smuggling space than a start-up crowdfunding platform. It seems the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) hackers had an edge over the unfortunate enterprise. The scamming activity was noted over an Enigma Blockchain Project. It had been a joint venture of experienced MIT graduates.
The cyber theft was observed on August 21. The fraudsters managed to get through the social media handles and the website of Enigma. Services such as Slack chat and emails of Enigma were found to be compromised. A weak password on part of the CEO helped them crash down these sites easily.
Immediately on gaining access, the virtual thieves invited the subscribers and investors to move funds into the hacker’s accounts. They achieved this by sending out spam mails. They posted slack messages urging the Enigma supporters to join in the ICO pre-sales. However, these phishing content, corrupt as they are, were perceived as official. This was an easy bait for the solicited members to get defrauded.
The perpetrators who orchestrated the attack grabbed money from over 9000 users. They were able to nab around $600K in bitcoin using this hoax approach. The investors were thereby duped out of 1492 Ethereum, which is one of the most valuable and famous cryptocurrency. The hackers quite well tricked the victims to send ETH to a fake ETH address.
The incident occurred a week after Enigma alerted its users against spammers, scammers and phishers during the token sale.
When the scam was detected, Enigma officials took to Telegram and Twitter to advice its members against moving funds around the web. They requested its solicitors to avoid jumping into the defrauding plan. They have deactivated its Slash account.
Further, they announced that all wallets are safe. They also proclaimed that this scam cannot be classified as a database breach. Enigma issued an open declaration regarding the fake publishing. They have assured its customers of an official notice until which they would have to wait for the sale.
Also, critical security measures are claimed to be taken by the Enigma team. They have reset all passwords to a strong unique code with two-factor authentication. The crowd sale is set to live stream by September 11.
As a precautionary step, it would also be a good option to back out of such illegal crowdfunding platforms to save yourselves from more trouble.
