ICO platform Promises Full Refund Following $7 Million Hack

Initial coin offering support platform KickICO lost $7.7 million in KICK tokens in a hack on Thursday, the company reported.

CEO Anti Danilevski wrote in a blog post that the startup's team discovered some 70 million KICK tokens missing from its wallet after the KickCoin smart contract owner's private key was compromised. Several users' wallets were emptied as part of the hack, though the startup committed to returning tokens to all holders.

Danilevski said the firm first learned of the breach when users complained they could not find tokens worth around $800,000 in their wallets.

"In order to hide the results of their activities, they employed methods used by the KickCoin smart contract in integration with the Bancor network: hackers destroyed tokens at approximately 40 addresses and created tokens at the other 40 addresses in the corresponding amount," Danilevski wrote.

A spokesperson from Bancor told CoinDesk that the specific function which allowed the smart contract's private key to be compromised was built by KickICO, "and was not a prerequisite nor part of its integration of Bancor."