VeChain hack, that occurred on December 13 has left quite a mess in its wake. The network’s CFO has resigned while the network would soon vote for burning the stolen tokens. The network has announced that it would be upgrading its security to ensure no such incidents occur in the future.
VeChain hack
VeChain Foundation is the parent of VeChain, a blockchain platform that is designed to improve supply chain management through the efficient use of blockchain technology. The platform recently suffered an attack by a group of hackers that breached in the company’s system. The hackers stole nearly seven million dollars from the company’s buyback wallet.
The assets stolen by the hackers were 1.1 billion VET Tokens that were immediately transferred to another address seemingly owned by the hacker. The address was marked by the company and has been blacklisted by various exchanges including Huobi, Binance and Bitfinex.
VeChain hack aftermath
VET Tokens have a fixed supply of 86.7 billion that means the hackers possess over 1 percent of the total circulation. The hackers’ holdings would make things difficult and stomp the development of the network.
However, the company released VeChainThor v1.1.5 two days after the attack which allowed the network’s Authority Masternode to vote on the issue. The masternodes have blocked over 450 addresses and frozen over 700 million VET tokens.
Now the decision has been passed to VeChain community which would be voting to decide whether the tokens should be burned or not. The company is now deciding whether to burn the addresses hosting the stolen coins. However, once these tokens are burned the sum would be subtracted from the total supply limit.
The company did not shy away from the blame but took responsibility for the attack. As the result the company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Jay Zhang will be stepping down from his role. Additionally, he will forgo candidacy for 2020 Steering Committee election and half of his compensation for next year.
The company’s CEO also took the responsibility for the VeChain hack and hence only agreed to take half of his compensation.