Stolen Enigma Pre-ICO Funds Have Been Transferred to the Bitfinex Exchange

The cryptocurrency ICO world received another nasty surprise yesterday when we learned the Enigma pre-ICO had been hacked. Assailants successfully modified the page for the project’s pre-ICO offering and changed the deposit address. Quite a lot of funds were sent to this wrong address, eventually adding up to around 373 Ether. It now appears the funds were successfully moved to the Bitfinex exchange, where they will be dumped on the markets.

Stolen Enigma Pre-ICO Funds Lands on Bitfinex

It is not the first nor the last time we hear of a cryptocurrency ICO hack. Criminals are purposefully targeting these projects because they attract a lot of novice investors. Every ICO project has its own web page, which contains the deposit address for both the regular ICO and the pre-ICO. These web pages are a massive security risk for all parties involved, as they are often prone to hacking attempts and other types of modification behind the scenes.

In the case of the Enigma ICO, the team was alerted to the Ethereum deposit address for their pre-ICO being changed. That is pretty interesting, considering the official pre-ICO had not even started yet at that time. Someone successfully gained access to the website’s server and modified some of the pages without the team noticing it until it was too late. Despite various alerts on social media, people kept sending funds to this address regardless.

When everything was said and done, the fake address received around 373 Ether from the Enigma pre-ICO scam. However, it turns out the account had other transactions from different phishing attempts, adding up to a total of 343.639 Ether in total. It looks as if all of this money is currently residing on the Bitfinex exchange, as the transfer was initiated 21 hours ago, at the time of writing. It is unclear if Bitfinex is aware of this platform and plans to undertake action against this user.

Looking at the Bitfinex chart, the Ether/USD price has crashed hard around the time this transfer hit the exchange with enough confirmations. Then again, Ethereum seems to be in a bit of a downward spiral right now, indicating this can just be a mere coincidence right now.  No one doubts this money will be sold on the Bitfinex exchange unless the company undertakes against. At the current price, 676.63656 Ether is worth $212,514. That is quite a lot of money to fall into the wrong hands. All of this goes to show cryptocurrency ICOs are a big problem for the ecosystem as a whole and we may see similar thefts in the future.

Not too long ago, a similar incident affected the InsureX ICO. A hacker successfully modified their website and changed the deposit address for Ethereum investments. It is a bit strange to see projects focusing on decentralization rely on centralized website platforms and not take the proper precautions when it comes to protecting their web pages. It is unclear how these problems can be solved, though. Using social media to spread the word to users will not work either, as those channels are often targeted by criminals as well.

Investors also have to do their due diligence before making financial contributions to projects, though. Everyone hopes to see  a tenfold return or better on their investment. Partaking in the pre-ICO is your best bet for quick results. However, it is this type of greed the criminals are actively targeting these days. Unfortunately, their attempts have been rather successful so far and it does not appear that situation will change anytime soon.