BTC.com has announced that they have suffered a cyberattack. The incident resulted in the loss of $3 million worth of cryptocurrency, both from the company and from clients. It has already been reported to the proper authorities, and some were already recovered.
Stolen Assets
The attack led to the BTC.com company losing around $2.3 million worth of digital assets, while the remaining $700,000 worth belonged to its clients. The theft was first detected back on December 3rd, which has already been reported to law enforcement in Shenzen, China.
The investigation did not start until December 23rd. Authorities gathered evidence and were assisted by and coordinated with relevant agencies, according to Bleeping Computer. In the aftermath, the company expressed that it would do its best to recover the assets that were stolen.
BTC.com claims that some of the assets were already recovered, although they did not specify the amount. The company has implemented security measures to make sure that potential hackers in the future will be intercepted and blocked.
So far, BTC.com is still operational despite the attack, seeing as they are one of the largest crypto mining pools. They claimed in their statement that aside from the digital asset services, the client fund services were not affected by the incident.
Is BTC.com Still Secure?
They did say in their statement that they have amped up their security to avoid another incident, but it is understandable if customers begin to become doubtful. There are other services you can look into, like Coinbase and Kraken.
However, according to CryptoSec, security is not guaranteed with any exchange. It's more advisable not to leave funds in exchanges. It has been suggested to use hardware wallets instead, especially if you have coins and tokens that are worth a lot.
Hardware wallets are fairly small, and they are made specifically for holding your digital assets. You won't have to worry about hackers getting into your account or the exchanges since it's basically offline or in cold storage.
This also protects your assets in the event that your computer contracts malware. The only sacrifice you'll have to make is to plug the hardware into your computer for every transaction. There is a Bluetooth functionality option so you can make transactions on your phone.
Hardware wallets are more secure, given that it comes with a private key, which is required when the user is sending or receiving assets to or from the wallet. Transactions are signed within the wallet through a crypto bridge, which connects the wallet to the blockchain.
The crypto bridge will begin transferring unsigned transaction data to the hardware wallet once the users plug it into their computer. After the private key is used to verify the transaction, it is uploaded back to the bridge, which leads to the blockchain network.
Users will have total control of their private keys since it never leaves the hardware wallet, no matter how many transactions they make online. However, It's still advisable to have multiple wallets for different transitions, even if they are generally secure, as suggested by BitPay.
