Bancor Halts Operations After Reportedly Over $12 Million Hack

Bancor, a Switzerland-based exchange that provides an automated conversion mechanism for blockchain tokens, shut down Monday morning due to a “security breach”. Before it announced the attack, Bancor said its Web App was paused while it underwent unplanned maintenance.

The company said it is currently investigating the nature of the incident but confirmed the attack only impacted trading operations, and user accounts and their associated funds/account balances were not at risk at any point.

Time to buy the dip?

They also confirmed the attack on Twitter and stated it would be several hours ‎before service would be fully restored and that ‎they will be releasing a more detailed report shortly.

In a statement, the Bancor notes:

This morning (CEST) Bancor experienced a security breach. No user wallets were compromised. To complete the investigation, we have moved to maintenance and will be releasing a more detailed report shortly. We look forward to being back online as soon as possible.

The exact scale ‎of the problem is still not defined, but sources told Cointelegraph that‎ hackers stole more than $12 million worth of several virtual currencies, including Bancor’s native token BNT.  News of the breach sent BNT price down sharply to $2.84, but the value later leveled off.

Interestingly, Bancor challenged users earlier in January to find bugs and mistakes in its wallet security ahead of Bancor Wallet launch.

Bancor operates as an open-source protocol for automated token conversions, and had raised approximately $153 million in ICO last year.

Bancor Protocol is a standard for the creation of Smart Tokens, which refers to crypto assets with built-in convertibility directly through their smart contracts. Bancor Network allows any integrated token to be automatically converted to any other token, directly from any Web3 wallet.

Earlier in March, Finance Magnates spoke to Bancor co-founder Galia Benartzi about creating a token system in which custom token networks of any survive have the opportunity to flourish.