The cryptocurrency mining market NiceHash confirmed it has fallen victim to a hacking attack that may have resulted in the loss of $60m worth of Bitcoin

Cryptocurrency companies continue to be a privileged target of hackers, the last victim in order of time is the cryptocurrency mining market NiceHash. The NiceHash marketplace allows users to buy and sell their computing cycles to mine cryptocurrency, the company confirmed it was hacked, attackers stole its entire Bitcoin wallet.

“Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website. We are currently investigating the nature of the incident and, as a result, we are stopping all operations for the next 24 hours.” reads the statement issued by NiceHash.

“Importantly, our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of BTC taken.”

The security breach has been reported to law enforcement, the company is also investigating the attack.

Even if NiceHash did not provide financial data on the security breach, it has been estimated hackers have stolen around $60m.

NiceHash declared that it is fully committed to restoring the service with the highest security measures, it doesn’t want to exit from the market due to the incident. The company doesn’t provide further details on the hack, as a precaution it recommends users to change their online passwords.

“While the full scope of what happened is not yet known, we recommend, as a precaution, that you change your online passwords.” concludes the statement.“We are truly sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused and are committing every resource towards solving this issue as soon as possible.”

The security breach was disclosed just hours after NiceHash confirmed its website was down for maintenance.

Dear NiceHash user, our service is currently under maintenance.

We are sorry for the inconvenience and please stay tuned for updates.

Thank you for your understanding. — NiceHash (@NiceHashMining) December 6, 2017

At the time of writing, The NiceHash website still shows a maintenance page.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Bitcoin, cyber heist)

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