Bitcoin Exchange Bitstamp Hacked Via Word Document

Early this year knew attackers to hack the Bitcoin Exchange Bitstamp, involving some 19,000 bitcoins were stolen. Translated at the current exchange rate it was 4.3 million. A confidential document investigation into the cause of the hack is leaked and includes details about the attack.

The attacker appeared in November and December to have a targeted phishing attack against employees of the company performed. Thus, the CTO of Bitstamp was approached by Skype, which he was offered free tickets to a punk rock festival.The CTO is an avid fan of punk rock and has played in a band, something that had overtaken the attacker. The tickets were in the form of a doc document sent via Skype.

In reality, the document was found to contain a malicious VBA script that had to install malware on the system. Although the CTO opened the document, the script does not seem to have worked. The other employees had more success the attacker.He sent a resume and a questionnaire and he presented himself as a journalist. On December 9, the attacker sent a phishing email to the Gmail account of the system. This system had access to the "hot wallet" of Bitstamp, where bitcoins stored.

In the e-mail suggested the attacker that the Upsilon Pi Epsilon system administrator (UPE) society was invited. The system opened the document then successfully carried out the VBA script and malware placed on the computer. A few days later, the assailant took Skype contact to continue the talks. Eventually, the attacker logged on via the laptop's system on the servers of Bitstamp in order to access the file wallet.dat. The digital file containing the thousands of bitcoins.

In total, found that six employees were targets of phishing attacks, which were sent malicious attachments in four cases. The researchers show in the report, which appeared in February, that the investigation is still ongoing, but they may have identified one of the attackers. The plan then was to lure the attacker to Britain to arrest him, reports Business Insider . As far as is known, however, there is no one still maintained in connection with the hack of Bitstamp.