51% attack on Ethereum Classic - Gate.io lost 200 thousand USD

Stock Exchange Gate.io was attacked on January 7. Assumptions about making the so-called 51% attack on Ethereum Classic has been confirmed. As a result, Gate.io lost about 200 000 USD.

Attack 51% - a situation in which more than half of the computers in the mining network of any cryptocurrency are controlled by one person or a group of people acting together. With 51% computing power, it is possible to discredit the original blockchain and place your own, manipulated blockchain in its place. This enables, among others double mining of a given cryptocurrency double spending).

7 transactions on 40 000 ETC

The company announced that 7 transactions were detected with a total value of 40 000 ETC, which corresponds to approximately 200 thousand. USD. The transactions were confirmed on the blockchain, and then canceled after the network was undone, which in turn led to the so-called double ETC spending. At the same time, Gate.io promised to compensate for the losses of users and gave other cryptoclash exchanges information with identified addresses that contributed to the theft.

In theory, the risk of so-called majority attacks (ie 51% attacks) is possible. In practice, however, taking control of the mining network is generally considered unprofitable due to high costs. But this time it was different. On page Crypto51.app you can monitor on an ongoing basis what is the cost of one hour of attack 51% for individual cryptocurrencies. In the case of Ethereum Classic, it is $ 4,560, which is over 18 times less than in the case of Ethereum.