What Is a 51% Attack? A 51% attack is an attack on a cryptocurrency blockchain by a group of miners who control more than 50% of the network's mining hash rate. Owning 51% of the nodes on the network theoretically gives the controlling parties the power to alter the blockchain.
At that point, you can lower the difficulty to less than a rubix cube for a computer to solve. Then someone sucked up hundreds of thousands of un-mined coins and unloaded them.