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There's a £60m Bitcoin heist going down right now, and you can watch in real-time


From: InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2013 08:51:40 +0000 (UTC)

http://www.newstatesman.com/future-proof/2013/12/theres-%C2%A360m-bitcoin-heist-going-down-right-now-and-you-can-watch-real-time

BY IAN STEADMAN
NewStatesman.com
02 DECEMBER 2013

One of the largest heists in bitcoin history is happening right now. 96,000 bitcoins - that’s roughly £60m as of the time of writing - was taken from the accounts of customers, vendors and administrators of the Sheep Marketplace over the weekend.

Sheep was one of the main sites that came to replace the Silk Road when it closed in October, but it too has now closed as a result of this theft. It’s a little hard to work out exactly what’s happened, but Sheep customers have been piecing it together on reddit’s r/sheepmarketplace.

Here's what happened: someone (or some group) managed to fake the balances in peoples’ accounts on the site, showing that they had their bitcoins in their wallets when they’d actually been transferred out. Over the course of a week the whole site was drained, until the weekend when the site's administrators realised what was happening and shut everything down.

Originally it was thought that only 5,200BTC - or £3m - was taken, with a message posted on Sheep's homepage blaming a vendor called "EBOOK101" for finding and exploiting a bug. However, over the weekend it became clear that the amount stolen was much, much larger.

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--
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Call 327-937-9786 for details.

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