Bithumb, South Korea's largest cryptocurrencies exchange house, has been hacked

soyjorge (41)in #cryptocurrency • 7 years ago

According to reports published yesterday, the South Korean government would be conducting investigations into an alleged cyberattack to the Bithumb exchange house, the main entity of its kind in the country.

Bithumb maintains bitcoin exchanges for a value that last year reached 2 trillion won. He is currently among the top five bitcoin traders in the world. On its platform, about 13,000 bitcoins per day are exchanged, approximately 10% worldwide. Similarly, it is the first market in the world to exchange between Korean won and ethers, the cryptoactive platform Ethereum, holding 44% of exchanges.

Reports indicate that the country's Internet and security agency reportedly received a complaint Friday from Bithumb, which said users had escaped through the personal computer of one of its employees, an official said. Whose identity he chose to remain anonymous. In addition, another institution participating in this investigation is the Korea Communications Commission.

The exchange house would have declared that the information of 30,000 of its users has been compromised, being about 3% of the total users; Although the house did confirm that the passwords of its users are not in the power of the unknown attacker. Even so, it is pointed out that some of the users have filed claims for monetary losses, which, they clarify, will be compensated.

According to a published letter, Bithumb detected that the attacker infiltrated a cell phone or personal computer of one of the employees through techniques such as fraudulent e-mail and phishing, clarifying that it is a situation that is far from the internal system of Bithumb, of their servers and cryptocurrency portfolios, which are safe. However, users are encouraged to change their phone numbers or emails since it is suspected that most of the leaked information is about such sensitive data.

In fact, nearly 100 users have already filed complaints and denunciations against Bithumb before the National Police's cybernetics department, some pointing out that identities have already been usurped and funds have been withdrawn through telephone calls in which hackers pretend to be Bithumb support staff, apparently.

During recent months there has been a lot of movement in the blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrencies in Korea, especially with regard to security and regulatory issues, as some unfortunate events such as extortion where bitcoins are used have awakened government warnings and Authorities, who during this month will be reviewing the financial and technological legislation to implement it in the surroundings of the bureaux de change, operating in a legal vacuum not suitable to sustain themselves healthily over time.

Imagen taken from GOOGLE.