A month and a half after New Zealand based cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia suffered a $16 million hack, the company has announced in a tweet that it is transitorily back in a ‘read-only’ position. The New Zealand exchange is announcing their return after a turbulent few weeks, the tweet reads:
“The read-only site will be live today, it will show balances as at 14th Jan 2019. Please use this site to reset passwords and 2FA credentials. We are finalizing a rebate process for affected users, more details to follow. Thank you for your support during the last few weeks.”
Cryptopia, which was hacked on two different occasions has still not officially announced how much was lost crypto was lost in the hack or its dollar equivalent. The ‘read only’ site is a positive step nonetheless, and allows for Cryptopia users to change their passwords and set two-factor authorizations. Users can also view their balances before the hack but cannot make withdrawals or trades. The Cryptopia team, however, did not announce when trading would resume and if affected users will be reimbursed.
Police in New Zealand earlier indicated that investigations into the hack were moving slowly, but looking positive on the whole. Speaking on the case, Detective Inspector Greg Murton said:
“Investigations into the Cryptopia hack and theft of cryptocurrency is progressing well and advancing on several fronts. Excellent progress is being made in the investigation, and we are working with Cryptopia management plus current and former employees who have been providing valuable assistance.”
Recap of Cryptopia Hack
It will be recalled that on January 14th, Cryptopia suspended trading without any previous warning and shut down its exchange platform with an ‘under maintenance’ notice. The next morning, the company released a statement saying it had suffered a security breach leading to significant losses. The exchange announced that the platform would remain shut pending their ability to assess the damage which had been done adding that the breach had been reported to relevant authorities.
The exchange later stated that its own investigations revealed a “worst case 9.4 percent” loss in the breach, which would mean that the majority of the cold wallets had not been touched. It, however, refused to disclose the dollar equivalent of 9.4 percent of its cold wallet holdings.
Following prolonged silence from Cryptopia in the days and weeks after the attack, Elementus, a blockchain analytics group, independently compiled an explicit analysis detailing resources lost in the January 14th attack. According to the researchers, more than $16 million worth of ether and ERC-20 cryptocurrency tokens were stolen in the hack.
