Ethereum Classic network hit by second attack in a week

The Ethereum Classic network logged its second 51% attack in a week. Bitquery analysts concluded that losses from the previous attack amounted to 807,260 ETC (~$5.6 million).

In early August, emerged reports that at block 10,904,146 the Ethereum Classic network underwent a reorganization. Its depth was 3,693 blocks. At that time, developers suggested the incident could be a double-spend attack.

To carry out the attack, the attacker rented external computing power to the value of 17.5 BTC ($192,000). Before that, he moved 807,260 ETC ($5.6 million) to several wallets, allegedly from an exchange address.

He then began transferring the cryptocurrency between his wallets, including it in blocks mined by himself. At that time, tracing the hacker’s actions was impossible, as he kept the transactions only in his own version of the chain and did not publish them on the blockchain.

Moving the mined ETC to an exchange, the attacker converted them into other assets and published his transactions on the blockchain, triggering the chain’s reorganization.

Analysts point to a possible link between the wallet used in the attack and the OKEx exchange. Viktor Fan, CEO of analytics firm Anchain.ai, arrived at the same conclusion.

The second attack was reported by Ethermine mining-pool operator Bitfly and the Binance exchange. The reorganization, deeper than 4,000 blocks, occurred at block 10,935,622, prompting companies to freeze ETC deposits and withdrawals. The losses and other details remain unknown at present.

Earlier, another 51% attack on the ETC network took place in July last year. The damage was estimated at $460,000. Later the hacker returned $100,000 of the funds stolen during the attack to Gate.io.

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