Tokyo: Flexcoin, a Canada-based bitcoin bank, said it was closing down after losing bitcoins worth about $600,000 to a hacker attack enabled by flaws in its software code.
Flexcoin said in a message on its website that all 896 bitcoins stored online were stolen on Sunday. Its collapse came after Mt Gox, once the world’s dominant bitcoin exchange, filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan and said it may have lost some 850,000 bitcoins due to hacking.
“As Flexcoin does not have the resources, assets, or otherwise to come back from this loss, we are closing our doors immediately,” Flexcoin said.
It later posted an update on its site saying that the attack exploited a flaw in its code on transfers between users and involved inundating the system with simultaneous requests to move coins between accounts.
“Flexcoin has made every attempt to keep our servers as secure as possible, including regular testing,” it said, adding it had repelled thousands of attacks over the past few years. “But in the end, this was simply not enough.”
The Alberta, Canada-based firm, which said it is working with law enforcement agencies to trace the source of the hack, said it would return bitcoins stored offline, or in “cold storage”, to users. Reuters
