Steemit was today subjected to a cyber attack. In the attack, fewer than 260 accounts were compromised, and less than $85,000 worth of Steem Dollars and Steem may have been stolen.
The hack has now been contained. User accounts and wallets are not at risk, and we hope to soon reactivate the Steemit website to normal order. Any users whose accounts were compromised will be completely reimbursed.
Though only a relatively small amount of Steem was stolen, we take any form of criminal activity against our community extremely seriously. We have reported the hack to police and other cyber crime authorities, including the FBI. A full, internal investigation is currently being conducted and we are working on an immediate solution.
Partner exchange Bittrex was informed of the compromise and is actively helping the investigation. As a precaution, they have temporarily suspended the ability to deposit or withdrawal Steem and Steem Dollars from their exchange. The suspension will be lifted as soon as possible.
Thank you all for joining us on Steemit. We apologize for the temporary disruption of services and look forward to resuming operation of our social network.
Regular updates will be provided here on Steemit.com
-Ned
This article should mention that the Steem protocol (the "coin") was not hacked, nor was any smart contract running on top of the Steem protocol. This hack is a website hack where a hacker stole funds and account credentials, and not a hack on the coin itself, at least according to the best information available when this article was written.
Do you know how the attacker got in? I assume they altered the javascript to exfil private keys, yes? How do you know how many accounts were compromised? It might be wise to cycle everyone's keys at this point. I'll definitely be updating my posting key.
Looks like you've handled things well, that is a very small amount stolen.
Would be interesting to know how they got in, was it a cross site scripting vulnerability?
This hack is a good example of why we need more clients for Steem, preferably open source. Steemit.com being the only usable portal into Steem is hampering the decentralization aspect. Is there someone working on alternative clients?