http://www.newstatesman.com/future-proof/2013/12/theres-%C2%A360m-bitcoin-heist-going-down-right-now-and-you-can-watch-real-time
BY IAN STEADMAN
NewStatesman.com
02 DECEMBER 2013
One of the largest heists in bitcoin history is happening right now.
96,000 bitcoins - that’s roughly £60m as of the time of writing - was
taken from the accounts of customers, vendors and administrators of the
Sheep Marketplace over the weekend.
Sheep was one of the main sites that came to replace the Silk Road when it
closed in October, but it too has now closed as a result of this theft.
It’s a little hard to work out exactly what’s happened, but Sheep
customers have been piecing it together on reddit’s r/sheepmarketplace.
Here's what happened: someone (or some group) managed to fake the balances
in peoples’ accounts on the site, showing that they had their bitcoins in
their wallets when they’d actually been transferred out. Over the course
of a week the whole site was drained, until the weekend when the site's
administrators realised what was happening and shut everything down.
Originally it was thought that only 5,200BTC - or £3m - was taken, with a
message posted on Sheep's homepage blaming a vendor called "EBOOK101" for
finding and exploiting a bug. However, over the weekend it became clear
that the amount stolen was much, much larger.
[...]
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