Hacking is a two way street.The core developers behind Ethereum, which supports a cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin, launched an assault on an anonymous hacker that stole at least $89 million through its network.Alex Van Der Sande, lead designer for Ethereum, announced the counterattack on Twitter earlier today.Within four hours, the core developers were able to get back over 7 million of its ether currency, or $89 million, according to the wallet address where the funds are being stored.The Ethereum developers are trying to retrieve money that had been invested in the Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAO), which raised $150 million in the largest crowdfunding project in history.The anonymous hacker posted an open letter that said he merely exposed a loophole inside ethereum’s smart contract system, and the funds were “claimed legally.” How much the hacker stole is still unclear.The hack has shaken the faith in Ethereum, which has been attracting interest from corporations including IBM and Microsoft.

There are theoretically other ways to retrieve the funds, but they could have also hurt the community’s trust in the network, as Quartz’s Joon Wong Ian wrote: Stephan Tual, a co-founder of a startup called Slock.it, which helped create the DAO, says there’s one way to fix the problem and boost the ethereum economy’s robustness.Ethereum’s miners, who decide what transactions form the cryptocurrency’s permanent record, can collectively agree to do a “rollback”, rewinding the ethereum blockchain to some point before the hack happened.The transactions for the stolen funds would effectively be nullified and wiped from the record.“It shows the community can work together for the benefit of the common good,” says Tual.This isn’t as crazy as it sounds.Bitcoin miners have performed at least one rollback, in 2010, to fix a technical glitch.But bitcoin was trading for pennies then, a far cry from the $11.5 billion-worth of bitcoin in circulation today.Ether at current prices is already worth serious money.

All the ether in circulation today is valued at around $1.3 billion, at current prices.Another question is whether a rollback dangerously undermines a cryptocurrency designed to be decentralized and beyond the control of any single party or group.Tual has an argument against that too.“You need to compare this to a central server of a bank, where they can just change numbers without anyone being aware,” he says.“In this case, it’s completely different.bitcoin haulIf all the miners come together and [do a rollback], it’s a community action.bitcoin 51 ataqueAnd it’s transparent, completely transparent.”litecoin online shopThe price of Bitcoin has just hit $860 and social engineers are at it again.usb bitcoin mining device buy

The attacker who recently hacked Bo Shen’s account draining his REP and ETH funds, though some were later recovered, has been named in yet another hit on the Ethereum forum on December 16. which contains information of about 16,500 forum users including both public and private messages of users, IP-addresses, usernames, email addresses and profile information.The hacker also accessed hashed passwords - ~13k bcrypt hashes (salted); ~1.5k WordPress-hashes (salted); and ~2k accounts without passwords (used federated login), the Ethereum post says.bitcoin founder killedSocial engineering was used here to gain access to mobile phone numbers and subsequently to accounts.bitcoin una burbujaIt was the same attack as the Shen hack that caused the Poloniex Augur market to bottom at the price level of 0.0001 BTC for one REP  despite the average price of 0.0035 in the previous period.bitcoin g20

Bitcoin rises, be aware of hackers According to a Kraken exchange post which was recommended on the Ethereum page to help users secure their accounts more, social engineers use one’s number to gain access to every account owned that utilizes phone-based authentication and account recovery such as email.They will then use that access and information to compromise more accounts, in order to harass, steal, blackmail and extort.bitcoin millionaire lostThe Ethereum people say they have closed the unauthorized access points involved in the leak and are enforcing stricter security guidelines internally such as removing the recovery phone numbers from accounts and using encryption for sensitive data as well as resetting all forum passwords, effective immediately.pitcairn bitcoinHowever, the emphasis is on securing wallets as anyone can get hacked.

Protecting ourselves from these attacks should be paramount at this crucial moment when the price of Bitcoin seems to be rising at a very high speed.There aren’t any foolproof solutions to securing cryptocurrency funds at the moment.Like we all know, the higher the price of Bitcoin goes, the greater the interest from various quarters - including those who are coming up with sophisticated ways to steal coins.Ethereum recommends that you ensure your passwords are not reused between services while information from Kraken says you need to focus on securing your mobile phone number.Username * First Name Last Name Email * Password * Repeat Password * You registration completed successfully.Confirmation email sent to email address provided.Email * Password *This article was posted on Sunday, 16:34, UTC.// -- Discuss and ask questions in our community on Workplace.Don't have an account?Send Jonas Borchgrevink an email -- // Ethereum retained its market leader spot this weekend with Ethereum Classic following in suit, being up by 5% so far today while the other majors are generally drifting lower.

ETH almost perfectly followed the trend channel that we have been monitoring in recent days on the Bitcoin pair.The correction that carried the pair back to the key 0.085 level looks to have ended, and ETH/BTC is likely headed for a re-test of the resistance zone near the 0.11 level, while the ETH/USD pair is trading at all-time highs.The currency recently crossed the $20 billion mark in market capitalization rising above the 50% of Bitcoin value, reinforcing its second place ahead of Ripple, which has been in a correction for several weeks now.Ethereum is expected to outperform Bitcoin in the coming months as well, with the long-term uptrend handily being intact in the ETH/BTC pair, as Ethereum adoption continues to accelerate.How are you positioned with regards to the two biggest coins?Let us know in the comment section!Featured image from BTC Keychain Important: Never invest money you can't afford to lose.Always do your own research and due diligence before placing a trade.Read our Terms & Conditions here.