‘Is Mt. Gox under attack?’ — drama hits repayments

This is yet another embarrassment for those overseeing the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, with one Reddit user quipping that the fright was karma for criticizing how incompetent the entire operation has been.

It’s been a horrible 10 years for the early Bitcoiners who lost everything in the Mt. Gox hack — with 850,000 BTC stolen before their very eyes.

After seemingly endless delays and disappointment, there is finally a glimmer of hope that they will soon receive some compensation from the doomed exchange, which tipped into bankruptcy.

But as if creditors hadn’t suffered enough, there were fresh fears of a new attack this week — with some receiving dozens of emails notifying them of malicious actors logging into their accounts.

Efforts have now begun to reunite victims with 141,000 BTC that were later recovered, and it seems an opportunistic individual might be trying to swoop in and steal crypto that isn’t theirs.

After all they’ve been through, that would really rub salt into the wounds of those who have been out of pocket for a decade.

“Just received 15 notifications for account log in. Now can’t get into my account. Is mtgox under attack???” one user wrote on Reddit.

They later expressed relief that the online system doesn’t allow visitors to change where payments are sent.

It seems @ovkovk was not alone, with others flocking to the social network to say the same thing had happened to them.

“I would guess some attacker has a record of all (or a whole lot of) gox emails and trying to brute force their way in. It has happened before,” @Joohansson replied.

On the bright side, it seems like a quirk with the website’s email system means that the mysterious individual was unsuccessful with their attempts — despite these emails saying they had logged in.

“The problem with their system is they send that “you have logged in” email BEFORE you enter the 2FA code, so a bit misleading.”

@Joohansson

One user put this theory to the test by attempting to get into their account with a bogus password — and sure enough, they got an email claiming that a login had taken place.

It’s yet another embarrassment for those overseeing the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, with one Reddit user quipping that the fright was karma for criticizing how incompetent the entire operation has been.

But it also exposes a pretty big problem when it comes to bankruptcy proceedings, as details about customers often end up entering the public domain. Such information can then be used by fraudsters to initiate phishing attacks.

Mt. Gox’s website was later abruptly taken down for maintenance as news of the login attempts emerged — but as one creditor pointed out, there was little to worry about anyway because the crypto it held had already been sent to custodians.

Who’s selling up? 

For months now, the prospect of 141,000 BTC hitting the market in quick succession has cast a dark cloud over Bitcoin’s performance, amid fears that this could lead to extraordinary selling pressure.

But in recent days, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency has managed to bounce back — especially after seeing off the threat of the German government offloading 50,000 BTC seized from a criminal enterprise.

Two weeks ago, a poll was held to ask members of r/mtgoxinsolvency whether they planned to offload their Bitcoin after receiving it. While the amount of BTC being offered in compensation is a lot less than what their balances would have been at the time of the hack, it’ll still amount to a huge windfall in cash terms.

Of the 467 people who replied, a whopping 260 — that’s 55% of respondents — vowed that they wouldn’t be selling a single sat. Meanwhile, 14.5% said they planned to offload up to 25% of their holdings. Just 18.8% revealed they’re intending to dump the lot.

In some ways, these figures aren’t surprising to say the least. BTC was worth about $600 in February 2014, at the time of the Mt. Gox attack, meaning all of these creditors were among this cryptocurrency’s very earliest adopters. Fast forward to now, and Bitcoin has accelerated by a jaw-dropping 10,733%.

Those who believed in Bitcoin then are incredibly likely to believe in Bitcoin now, even if they’ve had their fingers burned.

Nonetheless, there’s very little doubt that they’ll be pleased to see the back of Mt. Gox and move on with their lives. And those who do plan to HODL probably won’t be trusting an exchange ever again.