Almost 100 XRP wallets looted at Ripple service provider

Hackers have managed to access about 100 Ripple XRP Ledger wallets. Enej Pungercar, GateHub Founder and CEO wrote a letter to the public stating the company infrastructure had been affected. The letter affirms that the act was spotted in the company’s API. This resulted in several wallets to be affected. Even though the matter is under investigations, users are urged to transfer their cash off of GateHub to other XRP wallets.

GateHub, on the other hand, revealed that it was notified by its users and community members that funds on their wallets are missing. The company was, however, not able to pinpoint any criminal activity on its platform. But it has initiated an investigation on the issue. The company wrote on its Twitter handle:

“Our investigation team and forensics IT is working hard on an internal investigation. An official statement will be released soon.”

Although it’s not confirmed yet, the investigation found increased application programming interface (API) calls. The calls originated from a small number of IP addresses. And this seems to be the avenue the hackers used to manipulate the secret keys.

Thomas Silkjaer is one of the community members who notified GitHub about the theft. He published a report in which he said:

“We were made aware of the theft of 201,000 XRP on June 1. An investigation was imitated on the spot. It later came to be known the account affected was managed through GateHub.net. The offending account causing problems (r9do2Ar8k64NxgLD6oJoywaxQhUS57Ck8k) had stolen a good amount of cash from other XRP accounts; likely to be or have been managed by Gatehub.net.”

He continued to state that about $9.5 million (that’s nearly 23,300,000 XRP) was looted from more than 85 individuals. Before that, approximately $5.37 million was already stolen. The figure is equivalent to 13,100,000 XRP and had vanished through trading.

At the beginning of this month, Chainalysis, blockchain intelligence firm stated that 64% of mischievous blitz conversion tactics involved stealing of cash through cryptocurrency infrastructure. Other malicious theft practice analysis showed 12% included a combination of services. 6% covered P2P systems while others got siphoned through firms involved in trading. 9% of malicious gain is unspent.

Easy Success over Everything

Considering the hack is a hard fact to dispute, this will be a case for a while. Are there possibilities that attackers were planning something huge? But what if they were only trying if their plans are in place? What was so unique about the Ripple (XRP) wallets? Was it because of the recent surge in the price? All these questions need answers, and they should be made public. Even so, the Ripple wallet service provider (GateHub) remains firm that it’s still figuring out.

The only way to have a safe haven is to control your private key. This is the only way you will use any crypto safely. You won’t be nervous about unapproved business being called up by API. You will not also be bothered by the unexpected loss of fund because someone else assets were stolen. You will have instant access to your cash.

To do so, you don’t need to run a full node. Several wallets nowadays, allow subscribers to own private keys. Besides, they don’t have to run a complete implementation. So, no matter if you hold Ripple’s XRP, Tron, Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency choose a secure crypto wallet and keep your private keys safe always.

Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.

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