The most recent incident of security breaches in cryptocurrency is that of CAVIRTEX and its potential vulnerability, leading to its permanent cease of operation. Due to the ongoing security flaws and attacks targeting Bitcoin, the CryptoCurrency Security Standard (CCSS) has been published.

Bitcoin exchange markets have been targeted by cyber criminals, as it turns out by the continuous security breaches highlighted online. The most recent incident has to do with a Canadian company called CAVIRTEX (standing short for Canadian Virtual Exchange). According to their news release, they are planning to stop operating as a Bitcoin exchange option in Canada and their decision will be put into effect in a month (on 20th March, 2015). They have stopped all the deposits and they have offered a time period stretching till 25th March for the funds of CAVIRTEX users to be claimed.

Although the service will not be offered any more by CAVIRTEX, they have been aiming to reassure the people who have trusted them for cryptocurrency exchange purposes and they have been emphasizing their certainty that no actual sensitive data has been breached.

However, they do encourage all the users of CAVIRTEX to change their passwords as soon as possible. This is going to add to the overall safety and user experience of every client requesting funds and proceeding with withdrawals. Along with that, users are kindly motivated to delete the cookies from the browser that they use. An update from CAVIRTEX on the news release concerning the process of withdrawals includes the following:

“For clients looking to withdraw CAD we are experiencing delays due to the volume of withdrawals. Due to payment provider limitations, we currently cannot process direct deposits in excess of $150,000 per day. Given the current withdrawal requests we expect withdrawals to take at least 5 days longer than usual. We appreciate your patience. Bitcoin and Litecoin withdrawals will begin soon. Again, we are concerned over the safety of your funds, so we want to be extremely careful confirming that the user withdrawing is actually the owner of the account. We assure you that we want to return funds as much as you want to withdraw them.”

Of course, CAVIRTEX is not the sole company experiencing problems and suffering from security vulnerabilities. Instead, Bter has also been deprived of 7,170 BTC recently and a little earlier it was Bitstamp that stumbled due to the service’s potential data compromise. All at once, New York City has been flooded with phenomena of Bitcoim crime. In avoidance of any other severe security vulnerabilities targeting cryptocurrency as a whole and facilitating thoroughly protected financial transactions on the web all over the world, some drastic actions are required – no doubt about that.

Moving toward this very direction, the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4) and BitGo have released a standard that aims to act as a safety net and strengthen the protection of Bitcoin exchange services. The CryptoCurrency Security Standard (CCSS) has standardized the methods and has outlined the processes and requirements needed to be met in the field of cryptocurrency. In the standard, there are three levels of increasing security that make sure that the environment in which such financial exchanges are pulled through poses no actual risk.

With the growing need of using a convenient type of currency that enables anonymity and freedom online, it is imperative that safety is ensured at all times. So, such actions like the establishment of a standardized procedure shielding the cryptocurrency in general should be applauded. Otherwise, Bitcoin exchange companies will continue on being vulnerable against online threats and security breaches.