The Etherparty project website, a friendly interface tool for creating smart contracts, has been attacked by hackers who have changed the ICH's blockchain address to divert funds to the portfolios of responsible cybercriminals.
On October 1st, the Initial Financing Round (ICO) began, and with just 45 minutes to begin, the attack was successfully carried out, according to the project team in a statement. Subsequently, the website was closed by its owners for 90 minutes to prevent more people from sending money to the fraudulent address; then change the web address to another completely new and secure server.
The company says it will compensate those who have been affected by this measure with FUEL tokens, the native cryptonnet of the platform.
Etherparty CEO Kevin Hobbs said he was pleased with the support received from investors, but also lamented the bad publicity generated by the incident:
We have received overwhelming support from our investors, allies and the community throughout this Etherparty restoration process. Unfortunately, this also represents unwanted attention to this method of phishing and attempted hacking despite the vigilance of our technology and support team.
Kevin Hobbs
CEO, Etherparty
Fortunately, unlike some other cyber attacks against other ICOs, the team quickly realized the problem and announced that it would compensate users who sent ethers to the false address.
Lisa Cheng, founder of Etherparty offered her apologies and noted that the team has worked hard to prevent the attack from getting worse, as well as reiterated the commitment to make good the damage.
Our team has consistently and successfully prevented the worsening of security problems. However, we acknowledge and apologize for the temporary interruption of our release. Etherparty undertakes to compensate all taxpayers for the inconvenience caused
Lisa Cheng
Founder, Etherparty
In a second update statement they also warned that they were doing the relevant research to find those responsible for the hacking, as well as that the ICO has resumed and returned to normal development.
Despite the problem, Etherparty's ICO has had a positive start, selling over 10 million FUEL chips in the first hour. The smart contract company has sold 400 million FUEL chips in pre-order. The ICO will be open until October 29, 2017 or until all the chips have been sold. Etherparty
Before the date mentioned, they indicate, the funds will be reintegrated.
During the month of July the ICO of Coindash was attacked and the hackers managed to take close to 7 million dollars. Although the developers said they would reimburse the funds, they would only go through the transactions made up to the time of the announcement of the attack, so it is possible that many of the victims remain without recovering the lost.
Another case that did not reach higher is the Catalyst, a project whose attackers launched a false announcement during the month of August that indicated that the financing round would be advanced, raising an estimated $ 600 thousand dollars in ethers. However, the developers countered the attack and in September the ICO was launched without major mishap.
Given the enormous attractiveness of ICOs as opportunities to purchase crypto-actives that can generate huge profits in the future, these events become targets of hackers who try to deceive people with false messages so that they send the cryptoactive to fraudulent addresses.
Even so, some ICOs are fraudulent in and of themselves, and really are not greater promise than a medium-term financial return, but that behind have no support as a viable and useful blockchain project, so that as a participant one must also take great care about the companies offering to carry out these financial events.