Mt Gox Ready To Roll Again As Bitcoin Bug Fixed

The world’s biggest Bitcoin exchange, Mt Gox, has said it is ready to process transactions again, after it suspended withdrawals because of a serious flaw that was allowing hackers to hit it with denial of service attacks.

Mt Gox said its fix should “enable withdrawals and mitigate any issues caused by transaction malleability”, the flaw which saw attackers trick organisations into processing transactions by creating similar exchanges to genuine ones.

Yet the firm could only say it would reopen “soon” rather than provide a specific date.

Mt. Gox: We’re back… soon

“Thanks to our friends at Blockchain.info, Mt Gox now has a workaround that will use a unique identifier created by Blockchain to show whether transactions have been modified or not,” Mt Gox said in a notice to customers.

“This will prevent any fraudulent use of the malleability issue and protect the assets of our customers.

“With this new system in place, Mt Gox should be able to resume withdrawals soon. At the beginning we will do so at a moderated pace and with new daily/monthly limits in place to prevent any problems with the new system and to take into account current market conditions.”

Various processes have to take place before Mt Gox is fully open, including a re-indexing of the entire blockchain, which is the public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions. A new bitcoin withdrawal queue also has to be tested.

“Additionally, you may have noticed that we have added a new login system that sends you an email when you successfully access your account. This is an additional security layer, but as always we strongly encourage our customers to use the two-step authorisation options available in our Security Center.”

Other exchanges, including Slovenia’s Bitstamp, suspended withdrawals and deposits due to the weakness in the Bitcoin protocol. The value of Bitcoin plummeted by around $200 and stood at just above $632 at the time of publication.

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