Cryptocurrency Trading App Taylor Suffers $1.35M Theft by Hackers

Another hacking incident has been reported, and this time the developers of cryptocurrency trading app Taylor are the victims, according to bleepingcomputer. The people behind the cryptocurrency trading app reported that a hacker, who has yet to be unidentified, made off with an estimated $1.35 million worth of Ether from the company’s digital wallet.

The incident allegedly happened on May 22, when the hacker managed to gain entry to one of the devices used to assert control of the company’s 1Password files. It has yet to be disclosed how the access was made.

The Taylor developers said that all of their funds have been pilfered by the attack. “Not only the balance in ETH (2,578.98 ETH), but also the TAY tokens from the Team and Bounty pools.” The dev team added that the only tokens that weren’t stolen are those from the founders’ and advisors’ collection, as the tokens were inaccessible due to them being under a vesting contract.

Although the perpetrator hasn’t been identified, the Taylor dev team believes it’s the same hacker, or group of hackers, that hit them back in March. The assumption is based on the fact that the stolen Ether was transferred to the same wallet where the previous hack allocated the pilfered funds. This is its location.

The previous attack bagged over 17,000 Ether, worth an estimated amount of $9 million. At the time, the funds stolen were from the CypheriumChain project.

This time, the funds that were taken were from the Taylor team’s newly concluded initial coin offering (ICO). As previously mentioned, the hackers didn’t just swipe the Ether but also took some TAY token created for the ICO, which means the hack is worth more than the initial $1.35 million amount reported.

Taylor’s dev team were tight-lipped on the exact amount of TAY tokens that were stolen. After getting wind of the attack, the developers detected the hackers trying to exchange the stolen tokens for other cryptocurrencies.

With this, the team alerted IDEX platform – where the tokens can be exchanged – and delisted the TAY tokens to obstruct the hackers from completely profiting from their attack. The delisting, in turn, hindered legitimate TAY token owners from conducting trades.

Due to the patterns of the attack combined with what was stolen, rumors ran abound that the hack was yet another exit scam. The Taylor mobile app was slated to enter the beta stage of its development this month, but the incident halted it dead on its track, with the team announcing on May 26 that full work has now been ceased.