An improbable cold storage hack, celebrities using crypto, a growing crypto job market, and Bakkt to the futures.
Here is the news you are waking up to for October 23, 2018:
$7.8 million Disappears from Trade.io's Cold Storage
The Switzerland-based crypto platform Trade.io has reported that 50 million of its TIO tokens – with an approximate value of $7.8 million USD – have been inappropriately accessed.
Per a press release[1] published Sunday, Trade.io noticed unusual trading activity with its TIO trading pairs with the crypto exchange platforms Bancor and Kucoin. After asking the affected exchanges to pause TIO withdrawals and deposits, it was found that 1.3 million tokens each were sent to be traded on Bancor and Kucoin. The tokens affected came from Trade.io's liquidity pool, which was reportedly held in a cold storage wallet.
Bancor has since delisted TIO, while Kucoin has maintained the pause on deposits and withdrawals. Trade.io has halted all TIO trading.
A hack of a cold storage wallet has little precedent. Cold storage wallets are wallets where the private keys have been segregated to external storage away from the blockchain or internet access. Typically, cold storage wallets are stored on removable flash drives. Hacking a cold storage wallet typically requires having physical access to the wallet.
Per Trade.io, proper cold storage protocols were practiced, including placing the hardware wallets in bank safety deposit boxes. Trade.io has confirmed that the deposit boxes were not touched in any way.
Early rumors have suggested that the North Korean hacker group Lazarus, which is tied to more than $500 million in crypto theft this year, may be responsible. But that may just be because the group is already in the news[2].
Considering this security blindside, some are taking humor in
