After the recent 51% attack on Ethereum Classic, the exchange Gate.io has informed that the hacker has returned ETCs equal to about 100 thousand dollars, against a total disappearance of 270 thousand dollars, as shown by the calculations of the exchange.
In the first days of 2019, ETC had been a victim of a 51% attack. The hacker had taken possession of most of the ETC nodes allowing him to delete and rewrite transactions, also called double spending.
The total losses for all the exchanges had been estimated between 500 thousand and one million dollars. A very important loss that had further undermined confidence in the cryptocurrency.
After the return, the management of the Gate.io exchange tried to make contact with the hacker but without success. The hypothesis is that it could be a white hacker who wanted to highlight the weaknesses of ETC and then returned the money minus the expenses for the attack.
Gate.io, like all other exchanges, is still keeping a very high the level of security by blocking withdrawals in case of suspected attacks and requiring a very large number of confirmations: currently, Gate.io requires 4000 confirmations to carry out an ETC transaction.
These precautions are necessary because, as the 51crypto website shows, Ethereum Classic still remains one of the currencies most exposed to 51% attacks: the cost for an hour of attack is less than 5 thousand dollars.
