MyEtherWallet was again attacked by hackers

Online cryptocurrency management service MyEtherWallet (MEW) was disrupted for the second time this year after the Hola browser VPN was hacked within five hours.

The hacked VPN connected to the browser without disrupting the MEW service. Only users who accessed their wallet via VPN could be affected, so MyEtherWapllet employees published a post on their Twitter, recommending such users to transfer funds to another wallet.

Company representatives claim that the attack was carried out, as before, from a Russian IP address.

“The protection and safety of our customers is our top priority. As a reminder, we do not store users' personal information or passwords, so they can be confident that hackers can only obtain this information if the user used Hola's browser add-ons yesterday,” the company said.

In February of this year, MEW suffered a DNS attack that resulted in the loss of $365,000 in cryptocurrency stolen from users.

“A prime example of the huge risks associated with cryptocurrency - users' funds are not as safe as they believe. A small breach in the system and their cryptocurrency is immediately at risk,” said Raj Samani, chief researcher at McAfee.

McAfee research has shown that the rise in the value of Bitcoin in the fourth quarter of 2017 has prompted many attackers to expand their scope of activity into hacking cryptocurrency wallets - and their appetite for cryptocurrency has not waned at all.