
Common Bytes skilled a safety incident on March 17 and 18 that enabled a hacker to remotely entry the grasp service interface and ship funds from scorching wallets, in line with the corporate and sources. The breach compelled a majority of U.S.-based crypto automated teller machine (ATM) operators to quickly shut down. The hacker was in a position to liquidate 56.28 bitcoins, value roughly $1.5 million, from about 15 to twenty crypto ATM operators nationwide.
Crypto ATM Operators Briefly Shut Down After Common Bytes Safety Breach Allows Hacker to Liquidate $1.5M in Bitcoin and Different Cryptocurrencies
The most important cryptocurrency automated teller machine (ATM) producer, General Bytes, has produced 9,505 such machines globally, with hundreds situated in the US. On Saturday, March 18, the corporate informed the public of a critical safety incident that occurred on March 17 as properly.
“We launched an announcement urging clients to take speedy motion to guard their private data,” the corporate defined at 4:42 p.m. (ET) on Saturday. “We urge all our clients to take speedy motion to guard their funds and private data and punctiliously learn the safety bulletin,” the agency added.

Common Bytes’ security bulletin mentioned the attacker was in a position to remotely add their very own Java software utilizing the grasp service interface, which is often utilized by terminals to add movies. The attacker had entry to BATM person privileges and was additionally in a position to entry the database, learn and decrypt API keys used to entry funds in scorching wallets and exchanges. As well as, the hacker might obtain usernames, entry their password hashes, flip off 2FA, and ship funds from scorching wallets.
Bitcoin.com Information spoke with a U.S.-based cryptocurrency automated teller machine (ATM) operator who confirmed that every one U.S. operators utilizing Common Bytes machines have been shut down nationwide for the night. The operator additionally talked about that servers must be rebuilt from the bottom up, which could be a prolonged course of.
Reportedly, Common Bytes is transitioning crypto ATM operators to self-hosted servers. Within the safety bulletin, Common Bytes acknowledged that the corporate is discontinuing its cloud service. Moreover, the agency defined that it had performed a number of safety audits since 2021, and none of them had recognized this vulnerability.
Based on onchain statistics, the hacker siphoned 56.28 bitcoins value roughly $1.5 million and in addition liquidated dozens of different cryptocurrencies corresponding to ETH, USDT, BUSD, ADA, DAI, DOGE, SHIB, and TRX. The bitcoin (BTC) address holding the 56.28 BTC has not moved the funds since its final transaction at 3:20 a.m. on March 18. Some digital currencies have been transferred to totally different places, and a fraction was sent to the decentralized trade (DEX) platform Uniswap.
Common Bytes has skilled points earlier than, recording a safety flaw on August 18, 2022. The attacker on the time leveraged a zero-day assault to “create an admin person remotely through CAS administrative interface through a URL name on the web page that’s used for the default set up on the server and creating the primary administration person.”
As for the March 17 and 18, 2023 hack, Common Bytes not solely disclosed the addresses used within the assault but additionally three IP addresses utilized by the attacker. The supply who spoke with Bitcoin.com Information on Saturday night additional famous that whereas their agency’s system was hacked, the corporate runs a full node that’s “locked down sufficient” to stop the attacker from accessing funds.
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