Quarter of a million US dollars stolen from Bitcoin exchange

Hexus reports Bitcoin currency exchange BitFloor has suspended its operations after hackers gained unauthorized access to the platform and stole the equivalent of US$248,000. The Bitcoins were stolen using information gathered from an unencrypted backup of wallet keys. In reaction to the heist, BitFloor founder Roman Shtylman decided to suspend his exchange so that the stolen currency can't be used at this time.

Also Mr Shtylman quickly revealed details of the breach and appealed for help on the Bitcoin user’s forum.

“Last night, a few of our servers were compromised. As a result, the attacker gained accesses to an unencrypted backup of the wallet keys (the actual keys live in an encrypted area). Using these keys they were able to transfer the coins. This attack took the vast majority of the coins BitFloor was holding on hand. As a result, I have paused all exchange operations. Even tho only a small majority of the coins are ever in use at any time, I felt it inappropriate to continue operating not having the capability to cover all account balances for BTC at the time.”

The slightly tarnished silver lining in this cloud currency is that “I still have all of the logs for accounts, trades, transfers. I know exactly how much each user currently has in their account for both USD and BTC. No records were lost in this attack,” according to Mr Shtylman. Later on in reply to a user on the forum he added “And all records for the current status of the exchange (accounts, trades, etc) are all also secure”.