BITSTAMP

DESCRIPTION OF EVENTS

"Bitstamp is a cryptocurrency exchange based in Luxembourg. It allows trading between fiat currency, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It allows USD, EUR, GBP, bitcoin, ALGO, XRP, Ether, litecoin, bitcoin cash, XLM, Link, OMG Network, USD Coin or PAX deposits and withdrawals." "Bitstamp makes trading easy, fast & reliable. With 24/7 support, staking and bank-grade security & insurance. Since 2011."

"The company was founded as a European-focused alternative to then-dominant bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. While the company trades in US dollars, it accepts fiat money deposits for free only via the European Union's Single Euro Payments Area, a mechanism for transferring money between European bank accounts."

“In 2015, Bitstamp lost 19,000 BTC, which were stolen by hackers from the exchange’s hot wallet. At that time, the losses were equivalent to $5 million. Surprisingly, a banal phishing attack was used by hackers — the exchange employees received personal emails and messages in Skype from seemingly friendly sources.” “Six employees of Bitstamp were targeted in a weeks-long phishing attempt leading up to the theft of roughly $5m in bitcoin in January, according to an unconfirmed incident report said to be drafted internally by the bitcoin exchange.” "Bitstamp’s wallet system was compromised, prompting it to halt deposits and later shut down its platform entirely." “What’s maybe even more surprising is that the person responsible for security, Bitstamp system administrator Luka Kodrich, clicked the link and downloaded malware onto the working computer, after which the exchange was hacked. Bitstamp hurried to notify traders about what was happening, however, the attackers had already stolen the funds.” “On this occasion, Mr.Kodric was certain that these logins were not made by him, and must therefore have been the attacker. Analysis indicates that the attacker accessed LNXSRVBTC, where the wallet.dat file was held, and the DORNATA server, where the passphrase for the bitcoin wallet was stored, before data was transferred out to both servers to IP 1**.**.***.**8, which is part of a range owned by a German hosting provider. We suspect that the the attacker copied the Bitcoin wallet file and passphrase at this stage [...] Together the wallet and passphrase would have enabled the attacker to steal bitcoins from the Bitcoin wallet.” “all BTC held with [Bitstamp] prior to the temporary suspension of services were honored in full.” “A wallet associated with [the] $31 million Tether hack has been linked to previous bitcoin exchange thefts numbering in the tens of thousands of bitcoins.”

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Apparently the wallet file (named wallet.dat) was encrypted with only a simple passphrase, which was also stored online. This breach took down one of the largest and most widely used exchanges at the time, bringing down multiple services such as ATMs that sourced their liquidity from Bitstamp. Bitstamp has since set up multi-signature hot wallets through BitGo, while the majority of funds remain in cold storage. No customers of the exchange appear to have lost their funds in the incident.

Infographic: An Overview of Compromised Bitcoin Exchange Events (Jan 30)
100 Crypto Thefts: A Timeline of Hacks, Glitches, Exit Scams, and other Lost Cryptocurrency Incidents (Jan 25)
$31 Million Tether Hack Linked to 27,000 BTC in Previous Bitcoin Theft (Mar 2)
Bitstamp - Relaunch FAQ (Mar 2)
Crypto Exchange Hacks in Review: Proactive Steps and Expert Advice (Mar 2)
Top 6 Biggest Bitcoin Hacks Ever (Mar 2)
Brave New Coin (Mar 2)
Details of $5 Million Bitstamp Hack Revealed (Mar 2)
Bitstamp Claims $5 Million Lost in Hot Wallet Hack (Mar 4)
Bitcoin Scams and Cryptocurrency Hacks List - BitcoinExchangeGuide.com (Mar 5)
SlowMist Hacked - SlowMist Zone (Jun 26)
https://www.bitstamp.net/ (Dec 12)
Bitstamp - Wikipedia (Dec 12)
Bitcoin Exchange Reports Data Breach - BankInfoSecurity (Dec 12)

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