Enigma Cryptocurrency Hacked & $500k In Ethereum Stolen

Enigma, a cryptocurrency investor platform suffered after being hacked on August 21. The online platform was compromised and resulted in nearly $500,000 of its virtual currency Ethereum being stolen. The heist occurred as the marketplace was planning for its first Token Sale, also referred to as an initial coin offering (ICO) for its Ethereum (ETH) currency.

The hackers reportedly set up a bogus ETH address and sent fake messages via emails as well as via an official Slack channel, offering a pre-sale of tokens before the launch of the official ICO. While several investors recognized it as a phishing attempt, others failed to do so and sent money to the compromised ETH wallet.

Enigma initially sent out a warning on Twitter regarding the attack and asked investors to not send any money to the given address. The company would later report that the online platform had been fixed and they had once again taken control of the compromised accounts and addresses.

IMPT: read the following info from Enigma re: recent scam attempt. Join our Telegram to speak with team admins: https://t.co/SSGIsJ2ZWe pic.twitter.com/mM5mcaAzqG

— Enigma Project (@EnigmaMPC) August 21, 2017

Enigma has stated that no company money was stolen and also no wallet addresses, password details or private keys of users were compromised. The firm also stated that none of its digital channels including Twitter, Facebook or its blog have been hacked. The company did confirm that the enigma.co domain had been compromised, along with the account of a Slack channel administrator as well as a mailing list, which enabled the hackers to send authentic –looking emails to users from a legitimate Enigma domain email address.

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Enigma apologized for the attack and for causing harm to the community. In a statement Enigma said

[We] will work hard to make this right. We're actively investigating the scam attempt and the parties involved with multiple partners, including law enforcement, vigilant members of our community, other companies in our space, and exchanges

The investors who lost funds in the scam have been asked to get in touch with Enigma but it is not clear if refunds will be offered. This is the sixth incident of cryptocurrency-related hacking in the past few months and the fifth time Ethereum has been the target of a heist.

In July 2017, hackers successfully pulled off a similar attack on CoinDash's ICO, netting them $7.4 million in stolen funds. Soon after $30 million in ETH was stolen by hackers from multi-sig wallets containing the cryptocurrency.

As per a media report, some users have alleged that the attack happened after Enigma's CEO Guy Zyskind's accounts got compromised. According to these reports, Zyskind's account details had become public due to a previous data breach which the hackers used to access other accounts.

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