In a major cybersecurity breach, hackers have gained access to Russian cryptocurrency exchange Livecoin servers. The company in a statement said that it had lost control of some of its servers and cybercriminals have modified exchange rates up to 10-15 times their normal values, urging customers to stop using its services temporarily.
The company posted the message about the attack that appeared to have occurred on the night between December 23 and December 24 on its official website.
It seemed that the hackers took control of the Livecoin infrastructure and modified the exchange rates to huge and unrealistic values, the report quoted ZDNet.
The hackers changed the exchange rate for Bitcoin from the regular $23,000/BTC to more than $450,000/BTC, while Ether was increased to $15,000/ETH from $600/ETH. The price of Ripple grew from $0.27/XRP to over $17/XRP.
According to Livecoin, the attack seemed to be well-planned.
In a message, the company said, “We lost control of all of our servers, backend and nodes. Thus, we were not able to stop our service in time. Our news channels were compromised as well.”
Livecoin currently ranks 173rd for the cryptocurrency exchange on the internet, with roughly $16 million transactions daily.
