According to the Mail Online, the Silk Road 2.0 website has been hacked and around $2.7 million in Bitcoin stolen. Silk Road 2.0 is the new incarnation of Silk Road, the virtual black market that was closed down a few months ago after an FBI sting and the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the purported mastermind behind the operation.
However, today, the administrator of Silk Road 2.0, known as Defcon, announced the site had been hit by hackers who took advantage of the same “transaction malleability” that caused temporary transfer shutdowns at Bitcoin exchanges BitStamp and Mt Gox earlier this week.
Tech news outlet The Verge is reporting that Defcon claims a vendor exploited a vulnerability during the site’s relaunch process, managing to hide an avalanche of transactions until the Bitcoins in user wallets had all been transferred out.
Calling for the return of the stolen Bitcoin
Silk Road 2.0 administrator Defcon released a statement earlier today where he called on the hackers to return the stolen Bitcoin.
“Given the right flavor of influence from our community, we can only hope that he will decide to return the coins with integrity as opposed to hiding like a coward,” he wrote in the statement.
Defcon and colleagues also provided some information about the hackers to aid in apprehending them. “Attacker 1: (Responsible for 95% of theft),” wrote an administrator. “Suspected French, responsible for vast majority of the thefts. Used the following six vendor accounts to order from each other, to find and exploit the vulnerability aggressively.”
News of yet another major Bitcoin theft has rattled the market and caused the price of Bitcoin to drop by around $50, and it is currently trading at around $600 as of noon ET today.
Silk Road 2.0 back up
The statement went on to say that the Silk Road 2.0 site is officially active again, and that the IT team has installed strong new security protocols to prevent similar incidents. These security measures would, furthermore, make Bitcoin transactions significantly more difficult and time consuming.
