The Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain has suffered two 51 percent attacks across the last few days. The two attacks caused the reorganization of a massive number of blocks on the ETC chain. The attacker was also able to double-spend $1.68 million worth of crypto through the attacks.
Ethereum Classic suffers another 51 percent attack
The second 51 percent attack caused the reorganization of 4,236 blocks. The malicious actor was trying to double spend 465,444 ETC (around $3.3 million).
However, the attacker was only able to able to spend around half of that sum. The hacker double-spent 238,306 ETC coins worth around $1.86 million at the current trading price.
The hacker also received another 14,200 ETC coins as the block reward during the 51 percent attack.
The first 51 percent attack was believed to be miner complications such as losing access to the internet. The attack reorganized around 3,700 blocks on the chain. However, the developers did not detect any double-spending and believed it to be due to problems at the miner’s end. The second attack confirmed the malicious intent behind the attack.
CipherTrace to investigate the attacks
In a Friday announcement, the Ethereum Classic Labs stated that it has asked two firms to assist in the investigation regarding the recent attacks. The two companies are law firm Kobre & Kim and blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace. The firms will help ETC Labs to investigate and place criminal charges against the orchestrators behind the recent attacks.
Terry Culver from the ETC Labs stated that the company is ready to cooperate with agencies and stakeholders in the US “to identify the responsible parties.”
