Yet another Verge hack has taken place, with over $1,750,000 stolen in 24 hours. Will this be the last blow for the now stricken cryptocurrency?
Late last night Verge developers were alerted to another attack on their blockchain, with the chain being exploited again by a ‘slightly modified attack vector’ using 2 algorithms.
it appears some mining pools are under ddos attack, and we are experiencing a delay in our blocks, we are working to resolve this.
— vergecurrency (@vergecurrency) May 22, 2018
This post by the official Verge team attribute it to a DDOS attack – something that seems to have only been rectified, and doesn’t allude to the huge magnitude of money stolen.
In this extensive reddit community post, ‘Flenst’ describes how the original attack succeeded, how it has happened again so quickly after it was reportedly ‘fixed’, and how it wasn’t a simple DDOS attack.
The hacker(s) managed to generate $950 per minute, using an almost identical exploit in Verge’s blockchain. This strikes a massive PR and technical failure and potential loss of funds. Despite Mindgeek’s partnership signature barely dry on the paper, the future of this and other business relationships may be at stake.
It seems that Verge’s technical team had merely applied a ‘bandaid’ to the original exploit, and as such the hackers merely have to increase the number of algorithms they use.
Whether this will be enough to cause a run on the currency remains to be seen.
Image From Shutterstock
