Iota Network Relaunched Following Trinity Wallet Theft

After almost a month following a massive hack, the Iota Foundation has brought their network back online.

The Iota network was relaunched on Tuesday following the Feb. 12 attack on the platform’s Trinity Wallet software. Although the network was shut down that same day to prevent further security breaches, 8.55 million MIOTA — approximately $2 million — was stolen from 50 users of the digital asset wallet.

In a March 10 blog post, the IOTA Foundation announced the Coordinator — the centralized node curating all transactions — was back online following a seed migration period.

The desktop version of Trinity Wallet was found to be vulnerable after hackers gained access to private wallet keys. The cause of the attack was attributed to MoonPay, a service that allows users to purchase Iota directly. Within a week, the Foundation was urging users to take advantage of a migration tool to move their tokens to new and secure accounts.

Preventing additional attacks on the network

In response to this theft, Iota also laid out their plans to reduce the possibility of future breaches:

"The IOTA Foundation is overhauling its internal processes, with upcoming changes to software security practices, improvements to our security capabilities and resources, and expansion of our efforts in education and best practices for any software that handles user accounts on the IOTA network."

Fallout from the February theft

According to the Foundation, the person responsible for the Feb. 12 breach has not been found. However, Iota will “continue to work with the FBI, as well as the UK, German, and Maltese police to identify and track the attacker."

On March 6, David Sønstebø, the founder of Iota, announced that he would fully repay all victims of the hack. At that time, 8.55 million in IOTA tokens was worth over $2 million.