Decentralized crypto exchange halts trading over security concerns

Bob
Published by:
Posted on: April 8, 2020 5:49 pm EDT

A “severe security flaw” forces Bisq to temporarily suspend trading services

The cryptocurrency industry is constantly exposed to hackers’ attacks seeking to get ahold of cryptocurrency stacks from exchanges and wallet services. There have been several cryptocurrency hacks in recent years in which important amounts of assets have been stolen, leaving some companies on the verge of bankruptcy. Fortunately for Bisq, a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading platform, a security vulnerability was recently discovered before it became a problem, and the company suspended services temporarily to fix the issue.

Bisq started as the Bitsquare exchange and is now a decentralized platform to promote crypto-to-fiat trades without the usual involvement of an intermediary. Today, the exchange made a public announcement to the community in which it is stated that developers are currently investigating a security issue, “If you have any active trades right now, please DO NOT send any funds.”

The developers insisted that it is “especially important” for customers to not send any funds if there is a connection with a list of trades provided by the company in a list of specific transactions. Following up on the post, and to bring some clarification to customers, the developers wrote, “To clear confusion: yes, Bisq is a proper distributed peer-to-peer network. So, you can override the latest alert key functionality that blocks trading. But we highly discourage you from doing this for your own security.”

They also confirmed that none of the users’ funds are at risk and promised to be releasing more details as soon as possible. The trading services for Bisq will not be resume until the v1.3.0 of the application is released, which includes all existing and pending trades. “Please hold tight,” wrote the developers.