VeChain Suffers Hack Of BuyBack Wallet, Loses 1.1 Billion VET

Due to its inherent qualities, the crypto industry suffers from an above-average amount of cybercrime. Everything from phishing to sim-swapping to password cracking is within the industry, with an individually-flavored addition of crypto-mining malware. VeChain, an altcoin project having enjoyed a sizeable recent success, is yet another victim to this unfortunate fact.

Handling A Bad Situation

VeChain suffered the misfortune of having its buyback wallet, containing a significant amount of VET tokens, hacked. The VeChain Foundation itself is taking many steps to try and control the situation and lock down the stolen assets for good.

The VeChain Foundation took a good step in handling this matter, going directly to the public and announcing it first on Twitter, then in a more detailed public post. As the statement explains, the money was stolen on the 13th of December due to the buyback wallet being compromised.

Hacked Via Human Error

The Vechain Foundation put the blame of the hack on “human error and the mismanagement of the private key” of the buyback wallet. The Foundation took great pains to spell out the fact that the network itself wasn’t compromised, but the issue was due to the human elements. With this, VeChain states that the criminals went off with around 1.1 billion VET, or approximately $6.32 million according to CoinMarketCap.

The VET tokens were transferred to another address, it’s key being 0xD802A148f38aBa4759879c33E8d04deb00cFB92b. The VeChain Foundation is currently keeping a close eye on the address, tagging the address itself, and all addresses associated with VeChainStats. The list will automatically update the moment any funding is sent via the original address, logging the new transfer.

No Escape

The VeChain Foundation has been tracing the VET tokens every since it was stolen. They have also taken a large number of steps to ensure that this will never happen again. The Foundation has notified all exchanges of the event, asking them to monitor, blacklist, and even freeze the funds from both the hacker address and the associated accounts. VeChain stated that it was taking special attention to the exchanges where funds were already sent to.

On top of this, the VeChain Foundation has brought in a team of cybersecurity experts familiar with the blockchain industry to help with research. The team is also hard at work to ensure that no other wallet has been compromised as well. VeChain even brought in the law enforcement of its home country, Singapore, who will investigate the crimes further from their channels.