The NiceHash Hack: My December 2017 Account

NiceHash went offline after a security breach

On December 7, 2017, I wrote about a major security incident at NiceHash, the Slovenian marketplace for computing power used in cryptocurrency mining. The service had suspended operations while investigating its payment system.

My original report cited an early estimate of roughly $70 million in bitcoin losses. That was a contemporary dollar estimate, not a fixed valuation or a final accounting of the incident.

My own unpaid balance

I had been using inexpensive graphics cards to mine through NiceHash and had accumulated a balance worth a little over €100. A payout was expected about twelve days later, so the timing left me worried about whether those earnings would ever reach my own wallet.

For me, the mining software stopped connecting at around 9 p.m. the previous evening. That was my observation of the interruption, rather than a precise reconstruction of when the breach began.

What was known at the time

NiceHash said the incident had been reported to the authorities. The amount taken, the technical cause, and the prospects for repayment were still being investigated when I published this post.

This article preserves that uncertainty. It is an account from December 2017, not a statement about NiceHash’s current operations or a claim that the original loss remained unresolved forever.