The New Zealand cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia has been hacked and now conducts unscheduled maintenance of its systems.
The announcement has just been posted on Twitter, which says that the losses are “significant”:
“We apologize for the delay in the work of the exchange and thank you for your patience. Yesterday, January 14, 2019, Cryptopia was hit by security vulnerabilities, resulting in significant losses. After identifying violations of the security system, employees of the exchange transferred it to the maintenance mode, and while the exchange assesses the damage. ”
While the exchange can not report the amount of damage.
When you try to go to the Cryptopia website, the following message appears in front of users:
It is worth noting that the first official tweet about the maintenance of the exchange dates back to January 13 and reads:
“Currently we have unscheduled maintenance; We aim to resume service as soon as possible. We will keep you informed”.
Thus, we can assume that the stock exchange was hacked even earlier than January 14th.
The first exchange hacked in 2019
Cryptopia was the first cryptocurrency exchange, which was hacked in 2019.
The popular Bitcoin expert Whale Panda hinted on Twitter that this could be “internal work”, since now “many small exchanges are trying to make ends meet”.
It seems the news has not yet touched the markets.
At the same time, the announcement of the exchange said that the relevant government agencies, the New Zealand Police and the High-Tech Crime Division were already informed, and that a joint investigation is underway.
