I cannot really remember what was happening at that time but I don't think there was any active development on Cryptonite in that period and the block explorer was down, which is probably why it went unnoticed. I doubt the exploit had anything to do with wallet problems, the wallet has always been fairly buggy until recently, but many of those stability issues have been solved over the last few months.
Ok, thanks bitfreak and pallas for solving this problem so fast, 260 millions may be gone but for every seller there is always a buyer too.
I hope in xcn's case code really is the law...