Coindash ICO Theft

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Coindash

CoinDash launched a platform which allowed investors to gain additional analytics on their investments and also follow other traders. They chose to run funding through an initial coin offering, which allowed investors to provide them funds through an online portal. However, shortly after the launch, the deposit address on the website was swapped by a malicious hacker, and a significant portion of investors sent funds to the malicious address. The project went ahead and launched, and credited tokens to those who had sent to the malicious address. The project continues, although the name has changed to blox.io.

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

About Coindash

"CoinDash social trading ecosystem will allow users to share and view investment information and strategies." "You will be able to follow other investors, view their asset allocation and performance as well as copy trade their ICO investments using a smart contract tool."

"CoinDash Portfolio: Track, analyze and make smart investments." "Learn important analytics about your investments: performance, risk, asset allocation and diversification. Insert your public key and the system will automatically provide you with insights about your trading stats and history."

"CoinDash will include integrated real time market data and third party investment instruments to give you the best available investment tools in the crypto space in one unique platform."

"In June, Finance Magnates conducted an interview with Alon Muroch, the CEO and co-founder of Coindash."

"CoinDash, an Israeli startup, planned to raise capital by selling its own digital tokens in exchange for the cryptocurrency Ethereum, which is similar to Bitcoin." "CoinDash was aiming to raise about $12 million, and the company said that the sale secured $6.4 million from early contributors. That’s relatively small compared with some recent offerings." "The CoinDash Token Sale was supposed to last for 28 days or until the funds raised reach a $12 million hard cap."

"At the time of the ICO, in which CoinDash posted a string of characters which represented its wallet address for investors to send funds to, it appears that the hacker compromised the website and changed this text to a wallet they control." "[J]ust 13 minutes into the token sale, which began at 9 a.m. ET Monday [July 17th], an “unknown perpetrator” hacked CoinDash’s website and changed the address for sending investments to a fake one, the company later announced on its website. That diverted millions of dollars in contributions to the attacker." "[T]he ICO was able to raise $7.53m before the ethereum address it was using to solicit funds was altered to a fake one by an unidentified hacker, resulting in the ether going to another source."

"Visitors to the site had been told to send their ethereum to another address in order to participate in the ICO." "People who followed those instructions had their money stolen, according to the website. Over the course of about a half an hour, more than $7 million was routed to the hacker. According to Etherscan, which tracks the movement of ethereum, some 2,130 transactions took place."

"While the CoinDash ICO still managed to raise $6.4 million from early investors, the hacker stole $7 million worth of Ethereum before the company was forced to pull the plug on the token sale." "It was a matter of minutes before the platform realized the security breach had taken place and warned investors, but it was too late -- and now the stolen funds intended for CoinDash are simply sitting in a wallet awaiting collection."

"This is an emergency message delivered to you in order to stop you from sending your money to an unauthorized ETH address." "It seems like our Token Sale page was tampered and the sending address was changed. Please stop from sending your funds to any of the addresses until we say otherwise." "We are currently examining the situation and will shortly send further instructions."

"Despite the losses, CoinDash promised to dole out its tokens accordingly to everyone who participated in the ICO before it was shut down, whether or not they sent funds to the correct address." "CoinDash said in a statement on its website that it will provide tokens (CDTs) to people who sent ethereum to the fraudulent address prior to the CoinDash site being closed down. But transactions that took place after the site was shut “will not be compensated,” the company said."

"Contributors that sent ETH to the fraudulent Ethereum address, which was maliciously placed on our website, and sent ETH to the CoinDash.io official address will receive their CDT tokens accordingly."

“This was a damaging event to both our contributors and our company but it is surely not the end of our project,” CoinDash said. “We are looking into the security breach and will update you all as soon as possible about the findings.”

CoinDash urged investors not to send any ether to any address, since "transactions sent to any fraudulent address after the website was shut down will not be compensated."

"To assist the investigation, the company tweeted out a form for people to fill out if they tried to purchase coins."

"Bloomberg reported that, to date, the identity of the hackers remains unknown, and the coin sale has been abandoned, with CoinDash stating that no more of the cryptocurrency should be sent to the site that had been advertised."

In a statement, the company said the data breach and resulting fraud “was a damaging event to both our contributors and our company, but it is surely not the end of our project.”

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

• Known history of when and how the service was started.
• What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
• What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
• Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
• Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
• How were people recruited to participate?
• Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

• Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
• Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

There could be more than one section here. If the same platform is involved with multiple incidents, then it can be linked to a main article page.

The Reality

This sections is included if a case involved deception or information that was unknown at the time. Examples include:

• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - Coindash ICO Theft

Date	Event	Description
July 17th, 2017	Main Event	Expand this into a brief description of what happened and the impact. If multiple lines are necessary, add them here.

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost has been estimated at $7,400,000 USD.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

How did the various parties involved (firm, platform, management, and/or affected individual(s)) deal with the events? Were services shut down? Were announcements made? Were groups formed?

Ultimate Outcome

What was the end result? Was any investigation done? Were any individuals prosecuted? Was there a lawsuit? Was any tracing done?

Total Amount Recovered

There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.

What funds were recovered? What funds were reimbursed for those affected users?

Ongoing Developments

What parts of this case are still remaining to be concluded?

Individual Prevention Policies

No specific policies for individual prevention have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as an individual, check our Prevention Policies for Individuals guide.

Platform Prevention Policies

Policies for platforms to take to prevent this situation have not yet been selected in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as a financial service, check our Prevention Policies for Platforms guide.

Regulatory Prevention Policies

No specific regulatory policies have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of regulatory policies that can prevent loss, check our Prevention Policies for Regulators guide.