IOTA shuts down network temporarily to fight wallet hacker
Popular cryptocurrency IOTA has temporarily shut down its entire network after a hacker stole funds from ten of its highest-value users.
IOTA is a cryptocurrency that uses an alternative to the conventional blockchain technology seen in assets like Bitcoin. Called tangle, it’s a ‘blockless’ network that the development team created with vast connected networks of small-footprint connected machines (the internet of things) in mind. Its advantages include fast verification of transactions and no transaction fees. However, for this network to operate effectively, it needs a system called the Coordinator to protect the network when the transaction volume is low.
In a series of further updates, the team explained that the problem lay in a third-party integration with the desktop version of Trinity, a wallet that the company released in July 2019. The vulnerability apparently allowed an attacker to steal users’ seeds – digital keys that provide access to the wallet’s funds. The IOTA team published an updated version on Sunday to fix the problem.
