After an 11 hour downtime for "maintenance," Nicehash, the #1 multi algo mining pool - marketplace on the planet, has come clean with an official announcement that they have been hacked.
The main wallet of the service was drained some hours ago and all funds where landed by the hackers on this address
Final Balance 4,736.42642789 BTC
4736 Bitcoin equals 63,703,864 US Dollar
UPDATE: Wednesday, December 13, 2017
The stolen bitcoins have started to move out of the hackers wallet. Nicehash prompts the users that are running full Bitcoin nodes to try to fork (yet again) https://twitter.com/NiceHashMining/status/940961482388283393 Bitcoin...
The stolen #NiceHash funds started to move. If you own a BTC node, please select a blockchain branch without these transactions.https://t.co/hGKG0faSR2
— NiceHash (@NiceHashMining) December 13, 2017
UPDATE: 10:15 PM Wednesday, December 6, 2017
The nicehash website has been replaced by the announcement that they got hacked, as reported earlier in the evening by justcryptonews.com
Here is the emptied wallet
The official statement :
Dear NiceHash users! Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website. We are currently investigating the nature of the incident and, as a result, we are stopping all operations for the next 24 hours. Importantly, our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of BTC taken. Clearly, this is a matter of deep concern and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days. In addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency. We are fully committed to restoring the NiceHash service with the highest security measures at the earliest opportunity. We would not exist without our devoted buyers and miners all around the globe. We understand that you will have a lot of questions, and we ask for patience and understanding while we investigate the causes and find the appropriate solutions for the future of the service. We will endeavour to update you at regular intervals. While the full scope of what happened is not yet known, we recommend, as a precaution, that you change your online passwords. We are truly sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused and are committing every resource towards solving this issue as soon as possible.
Some weird coincidences :
According to a Reddit user the owner of Nicehash company with a share capital of half a million euros is Bitorious (45%) based in Dornberk, its director is Marko Kobal, and 55% of the company is owned by H-Bit. The owner of H-Bit is Martin Škorjanc. An interesting fact is that Martin Škorjanc is the father of Matjaž Škorjanc, who was arrested by Slovenian police for an online cybercrime with the help of the US FBI in Maribor. According to BBC Matjaz Skorjanc was arrested in 2010 after a two-year investigation into malware that had hijacked about 12.7 million computers around the world.
A quick google search shows results that seem to verify the story, showing Matjaž Škorjanc as an employee of Nicheash, but the LinkedIn page has been taken down.
TO BE CONTINUED:
The official statement on Reddit is getting a massive amount of rather heated comments, accusing the Nicehash service of being greedy. Despite the huge price rise in Bitcoin, the service was not lowering the limit for withdrawals, and the miners would have to accumulate 0.01 BTC to get a payout.
A lot of users are wondering, how is it even possible for such a big company, to even fathom having all of its assets on a single hot wallet..
Nicehash announcement has left users and miners of the service from all over the world with unanswered questions, to say the least, regarding outstanding payments and how they are about to deal with it, since that 4357 Bitcoin lost was client money almost in its entirety.
Updates will be provided as soon as news get in, stay tuned, the day is just starting...
Read Also: Nicehash Hack: Here’s How They Stole 4,736 BTC– Community In Doubt