Hackers Steal $3 Million from BTC.com

Blockchain portal BTC.com has suffered a cyberattack that cost it $3 million in digital assets, announced cryptocurrency miner BIT Mining, the portal’s parent company.

BIT Mining offers mining pool, data center operation and miner manufacturing services, among others. Its subsidiary, BTC.com, is touted as the world's top blockchain browser, providing mining services in multiple currencies, including BTC, ETH and LTC.

BIT Mining this week announced that a cyberattack hit BTC.com at the start of December.

“In the cyberattack, certain digital assets were stolen, including approximately US$700,000 in asset value owned by BTC.com's clients, and approximately US$2.3 million in asset value owned by the Company,” BIT Mining said in a press release.

It isn’t immediately clear if ransomware operators are behind the hack, with the parent company only saying it reported the incident to police in Shenzhen, China.

Thanks to a swift response and coordination with local authorities, BIT Mining says some of the stolen assets have been recovered, but stops short of saying exactly how much money the attackers managed to keep.

“The Company will devote considerable efforts to recover the stolen digital assets,” the notice reads.

In typical post-breach fashion, the company is now taking steps to strengthen its cyber defenses.

“In the wake of discovering this cyberattack, the Company has implemented technology to better block and intercept hackers,” reads the advisory.

BTC.com client fund services are running normally and business remains largely unaffected by the incident.

While most crypto thieves manage to remain anonymous for long periods of time, some leave enough tracks to be identified and, possibly, arrested.

In October, the cross-chain decentralized exchange Transit Swap announced it had managed to track down one of the hackers who participated in a $30 million heist a few days prior. In that instance, the attacker reportedly returned around $19 million of the stolen funds.

In September, crypto market maker Wintermute lost $160 million to hackers breaching its DeFi platform. A month earlier, Curve Finance lost $570,000 in a similar attack on its network.