Altcoin News: US Authorities Indict Two EtherDelta Hacking Suspects

September 23, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The prosecutor’s office of the Northern District of California brought charges against Elliot Gunton and Anthony Tyler Nashatka of hacking EtherDelta Ethereum-Exchange in December 2017.

According to the text of the indictment, Gunton and Nashatka changed the settings of the EtherDelta domain name system to mislead users “to obtain their cryptocurrency address, private keys, and withdrew funds contained in those cryptocurrency addresses.”

The attackers managed to gain access to the settings using the phone number of one of the EtherDelta employee, which was then used to crack his email. After that, they made changes to the parameters of the domain system in such a way as to redirect traffic from EtherDelta to a “fake website resembling the true EtherDelta platform.”

Visitors to a fake website, without knowing it, could reveal to the hackers the private keys of their wallets, and with it, lose their cryptocurrency assets.

According to the prosecution, the losses of only the EtherDelta users from the actions of Gunton and Nashatki amounted to at least $800,000. The total amount of damage was not disclosed.

Author: Marko Vidrih