Another day, another news of a hack. This time the victim appears to be NEO.

The Security Joint Labs of Tencent has alerted Neo (NEO) blockchain users of a bug that makes it easy for hackers to “remotely steal tokens that are native to the blockchain.” The popular Gas (GAS) tokens are affected by this vulnerability. Tencent used Weibo, the popular Chinese microblogging platform, to notify the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry.

A rough Google translation of the notification as posted by Tencent reads thus:
“Blockchain re-explosive money crisis! @SecurityJointLab Monitoring the famous blockchain project NEO (corresponding to the digital currency ‘small any coin’) has the risk of remote piracy.

“When a user starts the NEO network node with the default configuration and opens the wallet, the digital currency may be remotely stolen. Tencent Security Zhanyi Lab has submitted a risk warning to the NEO development community, and reminded NEO node maintainers and ‘small any coin’ holders to pay attention to wallet security, update the client version in time, and pay attention to abnormal transfer behavior.”

How to Avoid Being Hacked
Tencent’s security arm also gave advise to the NEO community on how they can stave off any attacks. To prevent the loss of tokens, NEO users were advised to take the following actions:

• Avoid remote RPC function usage and modify the BindAddress location in the configuration file to 127.0.0.1
• Upgrade to NEO-CLI client program’s highest version
• Change the RPC port number if a user still insists on using remote RPC functions. In addition to the change, protect the security mode by setting up a firewall, enabling a Https-based port of JSON-RPC-based interface, etc.

NEO is a next-gen smart economy platform that has been dubbed ‘The Ethereum of China.’ Its main focus is to make assets digital and to manage them in an automated process with the aid of smart contracts.

With a value of $5.81 per coin and a market capitalization of $528 million as at the time of writing, NEO is presently ranked 17th on Coinmarketcap. When the crypto market experienced the bullish run that lasted from last year December to February this year, NEO had a value of $191 per coin.

In conclusion
The security arm of Tencent has warned users of NEO of a potential bug that allows hackers to steal tokens remotely. This warning was passed on the Chinese microblogging website, Weibo. The loophole affects the GAS tokens, which is quite popular in the crypto industry.

To keep up with the trending news in the world of cryptocurrency, subscribe to the ICOholder’s newsletter.