Verge Hacked for the Second Time

The Verge network has slowed down in an apparent DDoS attack. Executives have said the delay being experienced on the Verge blockchain may be down to some mining pools experiencing DDoS attacks.

The events raise security concerns among users. Data from CoinMarketCap shows that the coin has  lost more than 14% of its value in the last 24 hours. The drop has been more dramatic in the last few in the wake of the attacks.

A unit is now trading at $0.44 with market capitalisation currently standing at $662.5 million, data from CoinMarketCap shows. The virtual currency is ranked 31st by market capitalisation.

“It appears some mining pools are under DDoS attack, and we are experiencing a delay in our blocks. We are working to resolve this,” a tweet from Verge said.

However the problem could be deeper. Tokens worth $35 million may have already been stolen as a result, some reports indicate. The glitch may have allowed several blocks to be mined just one second apart.

Not the First Time

It is not the first time the exploit is happening. Only last month 250,000 XVGs were lost in a similar prompting a hard fork. Verge lost a quarter of its value in April after the attack.

Bugs in the XVG code allowed malicious mining pools to set false timestamps on mined blocks. The network is thus misled to think the last block mined on that algorithm was one hour ago.

This allowed the attacker to control the hashrate and therefore the possibility to modify transactions. A block is usually assigned to a different algorithm to prevent miners from monopolising the network.

51% attacks as they are called can be used to prevent transactions from being confirmed. Confirmed transactions can also be rolled back meaning the attackers can double spend the coins.

Reddit user ocminer says Verge had not done enough to fix the bugs in its code.

“Attackers now simply use two [algorithms] to fork the chain for their own use and are gaining millions,” he said in a comment.

The privacy focussed cryptocurrency has now been experiencing several issues including its Twitter account being taken down.

There are also claims that the network could have inadvertently users’ IP addresses which puts its capability as a privacy coin into question. The claims have however not been proven.

Some users are however seeing an opportunity to buy the dip.