Dogecoin online wallet service hacked

We can thank Bitcoin and the popularity of the virtual currency for other forms of virtual money popping up. One of those copycat virtual currencies that has cropped up is called Dogecoin. The Dogecoin virtual currency has suffered its first hack.

Dogecoin online wallet service Dogewallet was hacked recently and 21 million Dogecoins worth an estimated $12,800 were stolen. A message from Dogewallet says that the hacker gained access to its file system.

Once the hacker had access to the file system, changes were made to pages that sent Dogecoins to the hacker's virtual account. Dogewallet has noted that it will refund all lost coins to those affected by the hack. However, the Dogewallet service has shut down in the wake of the attack.

The company says that the shutdown is temporary. One of the things that has helped Dogecoin become popular over a short amount of time is that mining for the virtual currency is easy, especially compared to what is required to mine bitcoin. Dogecoin also has a huge number of virtual coins out there that can be mined with over 85% of the available coins unmined. A number of bitcoins have also been lost to theft, including thousands stolen in the recent inputs.io breach.

SOURCE: The Next Web