Hackers steal more than 4,000 Bitcoins from Silk Road 2.0

The second incarnation of the (in)famous Silk Road underground market has been hacked, claims one of its moderators who goes by the online handle "Defcon", and an estimated 4,400+ Bitcoins (currently worth between $2 and $3 million) that the market kept in a central escrow service have been pilfered by attackers.

The Silk Road 2.0 was robbed for millions upon millions of dollars on 2/13/14. Any hard working, tax paying citizen who trusted this establishment to hold their hard earned Bitcoins has them no longer. The only thing they have to show now is a tear in their eye and a broken heart.

However,  the administrator of Silk Road 2.0, known as Defcon, announced the site had been hit by hackers who took advantage of the same “transaction malleability” that caused temporary transfer shutdowns at Bitcoin exchanges BitStamp and Mt Gox earlier this week.

Silk Road 2.0 administrator Defcon released a statement earlier tomorrow where he called on the hackers to return the stolen Bitcoin.

“Given the right flavor of influence from our community, we can only hope that he will decide to return the coins with integrity as opposed to hiding like a coward,” he wrote in the statement.

Defcon and colleagues also provided some information about the hackers to aid in apprehending them.  “Attacker 1: (Responsible for 95% of theft),” wrote an administrator. “Suspected French, responsible for vast majority of the thefts. Used the following six vendor accounts to order from each other, to find and exploit the vulnerability aggressively.”

News of yet another major Bitcoin theft has rattled the market and caused the price of Bitcoin to drop by around $50, and it is currently trading at around $600 as of noon ET tomorrow.

Silk Road 2 is the successor to Silk Road, a site shut down by the FBI in 2013. Hysteria over the secretive nature of the site and potential to trade in illicit goods such as drugs resulted in the FBI's action. The site's team issued a statement that any further attempts to shut down their efforts will result in simply the creation of another iteration of the site.

Source : Valuewalk