Livecoin, the Russian cryptocurrency exchange that suffered an alleged cyber attack last month, has closed its doors from doing business. The company was not able to recover from the hack. The company announced its closure at the start of the week.
The company was hacked last Christmas, with the alleged attackers seizing control of Livecoin systems and tampering with exchange rate values.
Bitcoin exchange rates were at $23,000 and then went over $450,000, and Ethereum grew from $600 to $15,000. Other smaller cryptos were also affected in some ways.
When the hack began and Livecoin instructed users to stop all activities, threat actors began cashing, reaping lots of profit by so doing. During this period, Livecoin claimed to have lost control of its servers, backend, and nodes. That meant it was not able to stop the attack from occurring and the wreck that followed the attack. Livecoin only said that law enforcement had been notified of the security breach.
So, after about a month, the exchange is citing damage in technical and financial ways for taking the decision to close its doors. It claimed that there is no way business can be carried on in this way, and that remaining funds will be paid to customers.
It is not clear yet what the fund recovery plans will be. The amount lost has not been made public yet, but Livecoin approves that claims be filed until March 17, 2021.
Livecoin will require such things as verification of claimants’ identities, including passports/ID scans, selfies, places of residence, primary device data for logging in to Livecoin, and even video footage. Because of all these requirements, some social media users are beginning to challenge the legitimacy of the documentation meant for claiming the funds.
The Livecoin team has urged users to keep calm, try to communicate with support, while also saying that in cases of threats and abuse, claims can be declined.
