The developers of Navajo have confirmed that a successful double spend attack has occurred on the network with the attacker managing to sell almost one million Navajo on Bittrex.
Navajo has been gaining a lot of attention recently after switching the name from SummerCoinV2 and releasing a whitepaper detailing how the developers intend to implement anonymous technology and ironically using the catchphrase “The unbreakable code”. Earlier today after a wave of rumours of an attack on the network, SoopY, a core developer released a statement on BitcoinTalk:
Information shared by Bittrex, this is not a fork guys but a double-spend attack so to seem , the attacker had created a transaction within a private network and had moved the coins within 6 separately created blocks thus bypassing the 6 confirmations check at Bittrex end and they had allegedly dumped the coins for BTC and withdrawn the same and while the network reaching that block had orphaned it thereby the Bittrex wallet being short of the 937620 coins.
The double-spend attack was confirmed by Bittrex who stated that they had been working with the Navajo developers to resolve the situation and that “All coins will be replaced or honored one way or another”. The Navajo developers have said that neither the foundation nor the developers themselves own enough coins to initiate a double-spend attack and so it must have been a ‘whale’. There will be a hardfork and mandatory update but details remain unclear.
In a week that has tarnished the reputation of cryptocurrencies that use the proof-of-stake mechanism for transaction signing, this is more bad news. Earlier this week Mintpal’s security was compromised and a large amount of Vericoin stolen leading to fears of the potential for double-spend attack. The developers then ‘rolled back’ the blockchain to a block generated before the hack occurred.
Less than two months ago C2 suffered from a double-spend attack and had to take drastic measures to fix the problem.
Although news like this is never welcome, the developers seem to be busy trying to work out a solution. The last update from developer SoopY read:
Dumpers can dump , buyers will buy , but the Developer or the Foundation will never back down from the coin that’s my word.
We will keep you posted on developments.