Bitcoin Miners Rejoice As NiceHash Returns With The Promise To Restore Stolen Wallets
It was nothing short of a nightmarish situation for many NiceHash users when the Slovenia-based bitcoin mining pool’s website mysteriously disappeared on December 6, 2017. Not too long after, the company revealed that it was facing a cyber attack.
Massive Mining Loot
NiceHash confirmed that it had lost nearly 4,450 BTC during the breach. The dollar-valuation of the stolen bitcoin stash stood at a whopping $62 million when the crime was committed (and has increased substantially since). Miners who had their recently mined coins stolen feared the worst as It looked like they were unlikely ever to get those stolen coins back.
However, much to their joy, NiceHash has now announced that it is back online and the process to refund affected miners is already underway.
https://twitter.com/NiceHashMining/status/943626787690614784
The refund is indeed a huge relief for the company’s customers – especially considering that speculations were rife about the breach being an inside job. Not to mention that the ambiguity surrounding the company’s refund policy further added to these speculations.
These speculations have now been laid to rest by a letter from the company’s chief marketing officer Andrej Skraba. The letter confirms that a group of international investors helped the company to raise enough reserves to refund and restore all user wallets.
“We are happy to announce we have been able to reserve the funds required to restore balances from a group of international investors. Old balances will, therefore, be restored by January 31, 2018. We need this interim period to ensure all legal paperwork is processed correctly, so please be patient while we do this,” the letter read.
However, the company is yet to confirm whether it would refund the users in fiat or bitcoin. Meanwhile, some Reddit users have claimed that their NiceHash BTC balances had been restored. Although, they also said that they were unable to access the refunded balance as of this writing.
Note that nobody yet knows if the attackers managed to lay their hands on sensitive user data. Therefore, all users of the platform have been recommended to alter their online passwords — just to be on the safe side. Also, they will once again be required to set up a two-factor authentication.
Increased Security Measures
Since its comeback, NiceHash has frequently been updating its customers using social media. The company seems to have already finished the first payout post re-launch. However, it has also issued a warning stating that the payment and withdrawal systems have undergone several changes due to increased security measures.
In a related development, the mining pool is said to be working on implementing altcoin payments to get rid of the Bitcoin network’s high transaction fees.
So what’s your take on this whole fiasco with a happy ending? Are you surprised that NiceHash was able to get back on its knee so soon after coming under a security breach of enormous scale? Let us know in the comments below.
