A decentralized cryptocurrency investment platform - ENIGMA Catalyst was attacked by unknown hackers. The attack was executed following the company’s teaching on phishing and fake emails to their users.
A decentralized cryptocurrency investment platform - ENIGMA Catalyst was attacked by unknown hackers. The attack was executed following the company’s teaching on phishing and fake emails to their users. It was hacked a few weeks before ICO (Initial Coin Offering), which is planned in September. (Currently 9000 users in the slack group) The hackers have compromised Enigma’s official website, slack account, email newsletter accounts. This is the 5th attack in the recent past by ICO hackers. The information regarding the infiltrators are still unknown. The cyber thieves have managed to bypass the transaction of about $500000 using a fake ETH address. It was reported that the lost money is not from Enigma itself, but from the cryptocurrency enthusiasts who joined company’s mailing list & slack group and transferred fund to the fake address. What is Enigma Catalyst?Enigma is a start-up digital currency investment platform. It is the brainchild of a group of MIT graduates. Guy Zyskind takes the charge of CEO of the firm. What is ICO?Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is used by startups to bypass the rigorous and regulated capital-raising process required by venture capitalists or banks. It is an unregulated means by which funds are raised for a new cryptocurrency venture.The ETH address was checked with “Etherscan.io” - which is search engine that allows users to easily lookup, confirm and validate transactions that have taken place on the Ethereum Blockchain. The address was found to be a compromised one, but still funds are being transferred to the same. At present, the fake address has only $20.39 USD in Ethereum, while around $600,000 has been already moved to other accounts. The fake address was able to advertise pre-sale of coin which made it easier to pull the users into the well and transfer money to the fake address. The spam email looks as below :
Enigma Catalyst tweeted on the incident :
“At this time, the Enigma team has retaken control of all compromised accounts, including the website. Some pages will remain deactivated for the time being while the team works. Please continue to be vigilant and check our communications across ALL channels. Do not send any money or personal information to anyone,” - first part of the tweet.
Enigma’s official website posted that an ‘unknown group of hackers’ have managed to infiltrate their website, slack group, and email newsletter accounts. They also uploaded a fake pre-sale page with a fake Ethereum address (0x29D7d1dd5B6f9C864d9db560D72a247c178aE86B) to transfer money.The Enigma Catalyst team had tried to create awareness to their users on how to detect phishers, scammers, spammers, and stay safe during transactions. A portion of the post:“As we work hard to build the future of data and crypto trading and investing, we want to take a few moments to talk about safety. Due to our strong growth, our community has become a target. The worst elements of the crypto scene—scammers and phishers—are attracted to good projects and good communities.”A spokesperson of Enigma Catalyst assured that the dedicated website for the Enigma token sale was not affected by the heist since it resides on a separate and more secure server.This incident is reported as the 5th Ethereum hack in last two months. The first four are:
- $8.4Million- during Veritaseum's Initial Coin Offering (ICO).
- $32 Million - from Parity's Ethereum Wallet accounts.
- $7 Million - during the hack of Israeli startup CoinDash's ICO.
- $1 Million - Bitcoins heist in cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb.