Private key compromise led to the loss of 1.1 billion VET

The VeChain Enterprise blockchain platform was compromised on Friday, losing $ 1.1 billion of VET tokens worth $ 6.53 million. According to the official statement, the funds were stolen from the company’s buyback portfolio due to a “human error”.

The incident was caused by the private keys being compromised during the process of creating the wallet by an employee. The integrity of the security of the main network and the main wallet were not affected.

VeChain executives claimed that they monitored the situation in real time and identified the wallets that took over the stolen funds. He is currently working with cybersecurity firm Hacken to recover stolen tokens.

Private key compromise – problem solved

Meanwhile, executives say the “error” responsible for the vulnerability that led to the hack has been corrected. In an statement, an anonymous member of the VeChain team states:

“I reduced the possibilities to a very probable theory. The breach of security was most likely due to incorrect behavior of one of the team members within our finance team. ”

Stolen funds account for just over 1% of VET tokens in circulation, which has a fixed bid of 86.7 billion, according to Messari.

The VET token is ranked 30th market cap and is trading at around $ 0.004, a 10% decrease over the last three days.

Launched in June 2018, the VeChain blockchain serves as a supply chain management tool for car manufacturers such as BMW and Renault. Most recently, the company devised a way to prove the authenticity of the Shanghai wine market through a traceability platform.

This is the eighth crypto hack this year, regardless of the incidents on the Quadriga and IDAX exchanges.