hypernova.pw "disappeared" with coins

[pocesar]

http://hypernova.pw seem to have been hacked, the difficulty dropped to ~18, and everyone started getting tons of shares each second, ended up with hundreds of coins in the accounts, but now is way down to 0.0000000000 LTC. They didn't even bother to use a backup or anything like that, just decided to zero everything. Pretty pissed right now.

[fcmatt]

http://hypernova.pw seem to have been hacked, the difficulty dropped to ~18, and everyone started getting tons of shares each second, ended up with hundreds of coins in the accounts, but now is way down to 0.0000000000 LTC. They didn't even bother to use a backup or anything like that, just decided to zero everything. Pretty pissed right now.

do they have an official thread where this is being discussed?

[pocesar]

http://hypernova.pw seem to have been hacked, the difficulty dropped to ~18, and everyone started getting tons of shares each second, ended up with hundreds of coins in the accounts, but now is way down to 0.0000000000 LTC. They didn't even bother to use a backup or anything like that, just decided to zero everything. Pretty pissed right now.

do they have an official thread where this is being discussed?

no, i'm just suppossing, nothing official. for the global pool difficulty to have changed like that, something went terrible wrong (from 800ish to 18), after my miner lost connection, I went to the site to see if it was online, then I saw it.

EDIT: see the last "created block"

#    Miner    Age    Shares    Confirmations    Details
398,334    ?    54 minutes    0    Confirmed    See details > points to http://explorer.litecoin.net/tx/zefzfeeffe

in https://hypernova.pw/statistics/

[fcmatt]

http://hypernova.pw seem to have been hacked, the difficulty dropped to ~18, and everyone started getting tons of shares each second, ended up with hundreds of coins in the accounts, but now is way down to 0.0000000000 LTC. They didn't even bother to use a backup or anything like that, just decided to zero everything. Pretty pissed right now.

do they have an official thread where this is being discussed?

no, i'm just suppossing, nothing official. for the global pool difficulty to have changed like that, something went terrible wrong (from 800ish to 18)

I would guess he upgraded litecoin and did not have the blockchain ready.. which means low diff reported to the pool.
So are you saying your account showed a ton of coins and maybe some people make withdraws draining the pool's wallet to nothing?

[pocesar]

http://hypernova.pw seem to have been hacked, the difficulty dropped to ~18, and everyone started getting tons of shares each second, ended up with hundreds of coins in the accounts, but now is way down to 0.0000000000 LTC. They didn't even bother to use a backup or anything like that, just decided to zero everything. Pretty pissed right now.

do they have an official thread where this is being discussed?

no, i'm just suppossing, nothing official. for the global pool difficulty to have changed like that, something went terrible wrong (from 800ish to 18)

I would guess he upgraded litecoin and did not have the blockchain ready.. which means low diff reported to the pool.
So are you saying your account showed a ton of coins and maybe some people make withdraws draining the pool's wallet to nothing?

yes, I didn't attempt to withdraw any coins because I knew something was wrong, I didn't own that many coins, that's for sure.

[fcmatt]

https://forum.litecoin.net/index.php/topic,3036.150/topicseen.html

looks like someone also noticed a problem...

[socket]

That's me on the Litecoin forum... happened to me as well.  I'm zero'd out ... had at least 9-10 LTC in my balance before it went to zero.  I did try to cash out during the weirdness... I saw 0% in the reserve fund so figured it couldn't hurt.  I ended up getting a transaction for 0.07 LTC to my wallet.  Right now the pool is up and reporting hashing of 460.70 Mh/s .. though the number hasn't change for the better part of an hour and I can't connect to the pool.

I had Nicksasa run away with at least 5-6 LTC ... hopefully the Hypernova guys handle this better.

[M0nsieurChat]

Dear all,

Today we scheduled a maintenance that went bad on Hypernova.
The purpose of this maintenance was to push the new litecoin daemon in its new version 0.8.3.7
As you may be aware, this new branch of litecoin needs to resync the whole blockchain.
During the blockchain syncing, the network difficulty dropped to something like 0.XXXX and the PPS rate skyrocketed.
Those who were mining during that upgrade within that 2 minutes timeframe experienced a WAY too high balance (we're talking about thousands of LTCs)
The auto withdraw threshold feature perfectly worked. Here is how you empty a pool wallet in seconds.

I'm very sorry about your loss. I decide to stop the Hypernova's adventures here.

If the coins (or part of the coins) are returned by those who received the withdraws, I'll be happy to refund those who ask me in PM or at feedback@hypernova.pw (please tag your subject with [refund] as you guess I'll have many mails within the next days)

If you need another pool, I would totally recommend coinhuntr.

[fluffypony]

Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoinmining/comments/1jfchi/wth_is_going_on_with_hypernova/

[fluffypony]

Dear all,

Today we scheduled a maintenance that went bad on Hypernova.
The purpose of this maintenance was to push the new litecoin daemon in its new version 0.8.3.7
As you may be aware, this new branch of litecoin needs to resync the whole blockchain.
During the blockchain syncing, the network difficulty dropped to something like 0.XXXX and the PPS rate skyrocketed.
Those who were mining during that upgrade within that 2 minutes timeframe experienced a WAY too high balance (we're talking about thousands of LTCs)
The auto withdraw threshold feature perfectly worked. Here is how you empty a pool wallet in seconds.

I'm very sorry about your loss. I decide to stop the Hypernova's adventures here.

If the coins (or part of the coins) are returned by those who received the withdraws, I'll be happy to refund those who ask me in PM or at feedback@hypernova.pw (please tag your subject with [refund] as you guess I'll have many mails within the next days)

If you need another pool, I would totally recommend coinhuntr.

WTF - they had scheduled maintenance where they had to rebuild the blockchain and they didn't think to put it in a separate directory (eg. ~/.litecoin2) or simply bring the pool down for the 30 mins it would take to resync? Seriously.

[fcmatt]

might as well say please come and join my pool at this point in time if many people are going
to be looking for one.

http://lite.coin-pool.com

We are a small pool right now, 0% fees, and since we look back 500,000 63 diff shares for payouts it is best to mine 24 hours a day with my pool.
I will change that lastNshares value in the near future since diff has been going up.

People who only mine a few hours a day should probably seek out a PPS pool.

[socket]

Sucks this pool had to end like this... was really a good pool while it lasted.

[litecoin_messiah]

All Refugee's are welcome on my pool, 2% fee Pay Per Share.

K thnx.

[heatgsm]

  now this is fun - just like ltcmine.ru - just my 2 cents : it`s kind of  "run on the bank" but in this situation it is driven by the bankers themselves . Next time just set the automatic payment threshold to min

[emunebtk]

Now ideally can't Hypernova link the wallet address with username and ask them politely to return? Or at least return enough to cover everyone's wallets? Luckily only had .01 LTC so no big loss but feel for the people who took a hit

[johncabat]

Freaking unbelievable.  First I got burned on notroll.in.  Now wiped out at hypernova.

[fcmatt]

Sometimes admins take short cuts and when dealing with people's money that is never a good idea. It takes a different mind set when doing these mining pools. Imagine that even BTCGuild made this mistake before. It has happened several times over the last couple of years to different pools and about the only ones who survive are either via luck, only put so much coins in the hot wallet, or had enough personal funds to cover the losses.

Me? I shut down all the daemons, especially apache (httpd) and comment out the cronjobs (auto payout script), that would cover this type of thing from happening until you are satisfied litecoind is running properly via the API commands. So it is just me, sshd, and the server.

But even then... all it takes is for one major linux 0day exploit to be released and so many coin pools can be robbed for significant amounts of coins. It will eventually happen. Trust me on that. So your major defense is to withdraw your coins in a timely fashion. Don't use the pool as your savings account. I dont want to have cold and hot wallets (I do). Take your money dammit and stop putting risk on me and pool admins in general! :-)

[phzi]

Now ideally can't Hypernova link the wallet address with username and ask them politely to return? Or at least return enough to cover everyone's wallets? Luckily only had .01 LTC so no big loss but feel for the people who took a hit

They probably could... if the accounts don't belong to the admins that is.

[add1ct3dd]

Freaking unbelievable.  First I got burned on notroll.in.  Now wiped out at hypernova.

so go to a decent pool like give-me-ltc..

[ocminer]

just my two cents.. bigltc.cc is there for a long time already