Verge succumbs to second attack in months

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Cryptocurrency Verge has suffered yet another hack on Monday, leading to 35 million XVGs worth $1.7 million stolen within a few hours.

In a statement on Twitter, Verge confirmed that its system was under a DDoS attack, which caused delays in its operations. There has been no further communication from the cryptocurrency since Monday’s tweet, and worry grows in the Verge community.

it appears some mining pools are under ddos attack, and we are experiencing a delay in our blocks, we are working to resolve this.

— VergeCurrency $XVG | XVGETH (@vergecurrency) May 22, 2018

According to reports, attackers penetrated the system by manipulating a bug in the Verge code, which allowed malicious miners to access the system. Miners set the fake timestamp on the blocks and quickly mined new ones during the hack. The hackers managed to infiltrate 2 out of 5 (scrypt and lyra2re) mining algorithms to steal the money.

Verge cryptocurrency experienced a similar hack last month that led to the loss of 20 million XVG worth more than $1.1 million within three hours. The hack forced Verge to put up a hard fork to help prevent the systems. However, barely two months down, hackers have managed to penetrate the system again. Some critics believe Verge did not take the proper measures to safeguard their systems after their first attack.

The attacks on the cryptocurrency have caused a massive decrease in prices. In the last 24 hours, Verge fell 16% to about $0.0434. Verge currently ranks as the 31st among the cryptocurrencies with a market cap of about $752 million.

Hack cases have become more frequent since the year started. According to a research done by Crypto Aware, a decentralized token investment-management community, $670 million have been lost through hacks and scams all over the world.  Contributing to this figures was the attack on Coincheck, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan, which caused a market loss of about $530 million.

The recent hacks and scams have caused many to become reluctant when it comes to cryptocurrency investments, saving and transactions. However, despite the uncertainties, cryptocurrencies continue to thrive all around the world.