VeChain Foundation BuyBack Wallet Hacked, $6.6 Million in VET Stolen, Investigation Underway

Hackers have continually gone after the cryptocurrency industry, making many cryptocurrency opponents concerned over the possible attacks that can be inflicted upon exchanges and online wallets. On Friday, December 13^th, as if to commemorate the superstitious day, a hacker infiltrated the buyback wallet launched by VeChain Foundation.

The identity of the hacker is still unknown, but an announcement on the official VeChain Foundation’s blog states that the total number of VET tokens stolen is 1.1 billion, which is about $6.6 million in value. The tokens were moved to a personal wallet (0xD802A148f38aBa4759879c33E8d04deb00cFB92b), which VeChainStats has already tagged, along with any associated addresses. If the funds are sent from the original address, VeChain will know.

Presently, VeChain is watching the transfer of the tokens with real-time data, and they’ve already taken multiple steps to try and reduce the further impact of the situation. According to the announcement, VeChain has:

• Notified other exchanges to watch for the funds coming across their platform, requesting that they freeze the funds if found.
• Launched an investigation in to “determine motive, method, and data flow” for the attack
• Recruited Hacken and its community to help monitor and contain the circumstances
• Established a security check with other cryptocurrency assets that VeChain lists.
• Reported the attack to Singapore’s local law enforcement.

The VeChain Foundation stated that it would continue to update on the situation as new knowledge is gained. Reports from The Block indicate that the company believes the hacking to be,

“due to misconduct of one of the team members within our finance team, who have created the buyback account without thoroughly obeying The Standard Procedure approved by the Foundation, and our auditing team did not pick up this misconduct, due to human error.”

VeChain, a blockchain-based lending platform, was established in Singapore in 2015, offering the VeChain Token (VET) and the VeThor Token (VTHO). VET is used for network-based payments, while VTHO is used in smart contracts and blockchain applications.