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Sentinel Network Reports Theft of 40M DVPN Coins in HitBTC Breach
Sentinel said the coins were stolen because of a vulnerability in HitBTC’s mnemonic phrase.
By James Rubin
Updated Sep 14, 2021, 1:43 p.m. Published Aug 20, 2021, 9:38 p.m.
Sentinel Network said in a tweet Friday that 40 million of its DVPN coins were stolen from users through a vulnerability on the HitBTC bitcoin exchange.
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- The decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) bandwidth marketplace, which supports the Sentinel dVPN application, said the theft resulted from HitBTC exposing its mnemonic phrase, a group of words that are designed to help recover a digital wallet or cryptocurrency.
- “This is completely out of our control, HitBTC had delayed the distribution of funds to users and compromised their own mnemonic,” Sentinel wrote in its tweet.
- In a comment to CoinDesk, Sentinel’s Srinivas Baride, called the exposure “gross negligence” and said he hoped HitBTC refunds its users and reassesses its management of user funds.
- In an email, HitBTC said it “always” does token swaps “according to our guidelines and on newly installed machines,” to prevent breaches, noting that “since day 1 we have had the highest standards in place for security.”
- Sentinel Network allows anyone to be able to sell their bandwidth on its marketplace. Developers can use the Sentinel Protocol, built with Cosmos SDK, to build applications, both public and private, that use the Sentinel Network’s bandwidth marketplace for dVPN applications.
Dear Community,
— Sentinel ⚛️ (@Sentinel_co) August 20, 2021
It has come to light that the CEX @hitbtc has exposed their mnemonic phrase resulting in 40million $DVPN being stolen from its users.
This is completely out of our control, HitBTC had delayed the distribution of funds to users and compromised their own mnemonic.
UPDATE (August 22, 17:27 UTC): Adds comment from HitBTC.
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