As reports came that hackers were actively exploiting a vulnerability, the IOTA Foundation quickly shut down the “Coordinator” node, a node responsible for approving all IOTA currency transactions. The attacks began last Wednesday and eventually resulted in the unprecedented actions taken by the IOTA Foundation.

As of this writing, the entire IOTA network is still shut down, sparking praise and anger among its users. According to the IOTA Foundation, the hackers were able to exploit a “third-party integration” of Trinity, a wallet application developed by the IOTA Foundation.

Researchers and open-source reporting place the total value of IOTA coins stolen at around $1.6 million. Law enforcement officials have been notified and are now actively involved in tracking down the malicious actors.

The IOTA Foundation recommends that Trinity app users not open their wallets until an update has been released.

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U.S. Charges Chinese Military Hackers for Equifax Breach

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged four individuals within the Chinese People’s Liberation Army for hacking and stealing data from Equifax in 2017. Wu Zhiyong (吴志勇), Wang Qian (王乾), Xu Ke (许可), and Liu Lei (刘磊) allegedly broke into Equifax’s system and stole trade secrets alongside the personal information of almost half of all U.S. citizens.

According to the indictment, “The PLA hackers obtained names, birth dates, and social security numbers for the 145 million American victims, in addition to driver’s license numbers for at least 10 million Americans stored on Equifax’s databases.”