The British exchange with Ukrainian roots BTC-Alpha, which was hit earlier this month by a hacking attack, announced a phased resumption of operations.
According to the exchange’s CEO Vitaliy Bodnar, users can already restore access to their accounts. They are required to enable two-factor authentication.
Clients are also advised to change the passwords of their email and other accounts if they matched BTC-Alpha passwords.
“Passwords were stored in encrypted form, but if desired and with sufficient computing power they can be decrypted. By default we consider this data compromised,” Bodnar noted.
For security reasons the exchange has increased withdrawal times. For verified users it will be six hours, for unverified – twenty-four hours.
“We acknowledge that hackers could have infected some users’ computers with the aim of stealing funds. If a user notices suspicious activity, they will have time to react, and the support team to investigate,” explained the platform’s CEO.
In addition, during withdrawals, verified users will undergo additional video verification. During the call, they will be asked to show a government-issued identity document on camera.
Unverified users have their withdrawal limit reduced to $100 per day. To increase the amount, a user will need to complete verification.
Developers temporarily disabled internal transfers and cancelled Alpha codes. According to Vitaliy Bodnar, all funds created in Alpha codes were returned to users’ balances.
For trading bots and analytics, users will need to create new API keys, as the old ones were deleted.
In the next stages, the exchange team plans to launch trading on key pairs and open the possibility of deposits. They did not specify concrete timelines.
Earlier in November, unknown hacked the computers of several BTC-Alpha employees. They stole passwords stored encrypted, but funds, according to exchange representatives, were not affected.
Among possible causes of the attack, exchange representatives cited information leakage.
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