Bitstamp Bitcoin Exchange Hacked, $5 Million Stolen in Hack Attack

Bitstamp Bitcoin Exchange Hacked, $5 Million Stolen in Hack Attack: One of the biggest, reliable and most trusted Bitcoin exchange — Bitstamp — on Monday announced that it has been a target of a hacking attack, which lead to the theft of “less than 19,000 BTC” (worth about $5 million in virtual currency; one BTC is about $270).

Bitstamp issued a statement on its official website in which the company warned its users not to deposit any Bitcoin to previously issued addresses, so as to prevent further losses. While the investigation is going on, the company has frozen its user accounts, blocked deposits as well as other transactions and suspended the trading business.

After the Slovenian-based Bitcoin exchange suspected the security breach over the weekend that compromised one of Bitstamp’s operational and active bitcoin storage wallets, the exchange suspended its service for the time being.

The company reassured its users that the security breach only affected its “operational wallet,” i.e. only “a small fraction of customer bitcoins” that were stored on internet-connected servers.