Bitcoin Gold’s developers have thwarted an “extremely long” block reorganization attack that saw a hacker mine a secret chain with rented hashrate for 10 days before trying to steal 8,000 BTG, worth over $75,000.

Scammers have made $24 million worth of bitcoin in the first half of this year, using increasingly sophisticated scams to trick their victims.

A hacker managed to steal 336 BTC from UK-based cryptocurrency exchange Cashaa. The trading platform has notified authorities and other exchanges to prevent the hacker from cashing out.

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Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Bitcoin Gold Devs Thwart ‘Extremely Long’ Block Reorganization Attack
• Scammers Made $24 Million in BTC in First Half of 2020, Whale Alert Finds
• Crypto Exchange Cashaa Hacked for 336 BTC
• Sponsored: Negative maker fees and bonus of up to $250 available to XBTPro users for a limited time

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $9,272.91 (0.19%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $1.48 bn. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $242.96 (1.12%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $654.87 million. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 3,245.38 (1.56%).

Bitcoin Gold Devs Thwart ‘Extremely Long’ Block Reorganization Attack

The developers working on Bitcoin Gold (BTG), a cryptocurrency created through a hard fork of the Bitcoin (BTC) network, have prevented an “extremely long” block reorganization attack, after a hacker tried to steal over 8,000 BTG, worth over $75,000, with it.

According to Bitcoin Gold’s developers, the hacker rented hash power from NiceHash and secretly started creating an alternative blockchain, creating a new transaction history for the network. On July 11, 10 days after it started the secret attack, the hacker tried to deploy the secret chain to steal the 8,000 BTG in a block reorganization attack.

Bitcoin Gold’s developers detected the attack attempt early on and alerted mining pools and crypto exchanges about the attack. They also supplied these organizations with an updated version of the cryptocurrency’s software that included a checkpoint at block 640,650.

The new code automatically rejected the attacker’s chain when it was released, successfully thwarting the attack.

Scammers Made $24 Million in BTC in First Half of 2020, Whale Alert Finds

A report published by large crypto transaction monitoring service Whale Alert has found that scammers made $24 million worth of bitcoin in the first half of this year after analyzing data with their new blockchain crime tracking tool, Scam Alert.

The report got to the conclusion that “crypto crime pays” after revealing scammers stole $38 million in bitcoin in the last four years – excluding Ponzi schemes – and projected that by the end of 220 scammers will have generated at least $50 million worth of cryptocurrency.

Per Whale Alert, the scam market is growing because scams are now more believable and aggressive. Some, like giveaway scams, are now more sophisticated and use the identities of celebrities and YouTube advertising to get their message out there and fool people.

The improved methodology, Whale Alert said, suggests professionals could be behind some of the most successful of these scams. The crypto watchdog pointed out that criminals face almost no risk when pulling these scams, and as such “if we don’t act as a community, the reputation of blockchain might not be able to recover in the long run.”

Crypto Exchange Cashaa Hacked for 336 BTC

UK-based cryptocurrency exchange Cashaa has been hacked, as hackers managed to steal 336 bitcoin ($3.1 million)after compromising one of its wallets. Users’ funds have not been affected by the incident.

According to Cointelegraph, in a media brief sent to it Cashaa CEO Kumar Gaurav revealed that one of their wallets was compromised and that he believes the hacker is from east Delhi, in India. The company filed a cybercrime incident report with the Delhi crime bureau.

Cashaa suspected it was hacked after malware was installed onto the computer used to make exchange transactions. The hacker was notified once an employee logged onto the account on July 10, and managed to move the funds out of the wallet. Kumar was quoted as saying:

“We are still investigating the damage caused by the incident and suspend all the withdrawals for 24 hours. We have called the board meeting to decide whether the company will bear all the losses.”

The funds were moved to a bitcoin wallet that has seemingly already started using coin mixing software to prevent traceability. Kumar noted that Cashaa is working with other exchanges to try and prevent the hacker from cashing out.

All major Indian crypto trading platforms have already shown support.

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