Founders of cryptocurrency mining company NiceHash apologise after hackers wipe out bitcoins worth Rs 500 crore

NiceHash, a company which facilitates the mining of cryptocurrencies for its users suffered a major incident of hacking which resulted in about Rs 500 crore worth of bitcoins being stolen. The attack caused the website to shut its operations for 24 hours.

The founders of the company, Marko Kobal and Sasa Coh, in a Facebook live stream, apologised for the incident. “Unfortunately, we became a target and someone really wanted to bring us down,” he said in the six-minute livestream.

Kobal said that about 4,700 bitcoins were stolen in the security breach on December 6. He said that prima facie the hackers were from outside Europe. The hackers accessed the computers of the company and stole a NiceHash engineer’s credentials. These credentials were used by them to access the payment system.

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However, its customers were less than convinced and said that it could be an inside job. One of the comments also said that the founders look guilty in the video.

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The Solvenia-based company has been active since 2014 and has handed out over a billion dollars in payment to its customers, the founders said.

“Our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of BTC taken,” the company had said in a Facebook post on Thursday.

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The company said that the investigation to ascertain the causes and limit of hacking into its system was going on. “This is a matter of deep concern and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days. In addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency.”