Fourth Largest Cryptocurrency Exchange Was Hacked. Users Lose Ethereum & Bitcoin
Bithumb, the world's fourth biggest digital currency trade by volume, affirmed a security occurrence amid which an obscure programmer could grab a yet undetermined measure of assets.
Pieces of information that something wasn't right risen on Thursday, when South Korean clients, who make a large portion of Bithumb's userbase, begun grumbling on a nearby interpersonal organization about losing control over expansive assets put away in their Bithumb accounts.
After a day after these protests, the organization formally conceded the break in a blog entry on its site, but it didn't give any significant points of interest.
Attacker hacked Bithumb employee's PC
More facts came to light on Monday, when pressured by local media, the company revealed that the breach occurred after an unknown attacker hacked the personal computer of a Bithumb employee, from where he stole the details of over 31,800 Bithumb users — about 3% of the platform's entire userbase.
According to local media [1, 2, 3, 4], the hack took place at around 22:00, local time, on Thursday, June 29, and the documents the hacker managed to access contained data on customer names, email addresses, and mobile phone numbers.
Soon after, Bithumb users started complaining online that someone was draining their accounts. It is unclear how the hacker gained control to targeted accounts.
Some users reported losses as big as 10 million won ($8,700) worth of cryptocurrency. Local media grossly estimates that the attacker made off with billions of won in cryptocurrency, but Bithumb never confirmed the exact amount of stolen funds.
Bithumb promises to reimburse users
Based on a blog post published on Monday, the exchange doesn't seem to know the exact amount of money the attacker took. Nonetheless, in a gracious move, the company is willing to provide compensations of up to 100,000 won ($897) per affected user until midnight July 5.
"When the measure of harms is affirmed, we will repay the whole measure of harms," said Bithumb in an official proclamation.
As indicated by client protests, the programmer stole both Bitcoin and Ethereum from client accounts. Other than being the fourth biggest digital money trade by volume, Bithumb is additionally the Internet's second biggest Ethereum exchanging stage by volume.
Bithumb revealed to South Korean media it reached law implementation a week ago and educated them of the burglary.
Two months ago, an unknown attacker hacked fellow South Korean Bitcoin exchange Yapizon and stole 3816.2028 Bitcoin (over $5.5 million).
This is not the only Ethereum-related hack that took place this past week. Also last Thursday, an unknown attacker has gained control over the web domain of Classic Ether Wallet, a client-side wallet system for the Ethereum Classic (ETC) cryptocurrency. The hacker set up a fake website, and used it to phish user credentials and intercept and redirect ETC transactions.