Investigation Still Underway in South Korea's Bithumb Hacking Incident
Bithumb, South Korea's digital currency exchange, is still under investigation following the cyber attack that took place this week.
According to Yonhap News, the company lost "billions" of wons when a home personal computer of one of its employees was hacked. Aside from the money lost, over 30,000 of customers' data have also reportedly been compromised.
Bithumb is considered one of the largest and busiest bitcoin exchanges in the world. Korea Internet & Security Agency is currently investigating the alleged hack. The company has yet to reveal exactly how much money was stolen, but it is rumored to be decidedly smaller than the 2014 attack on Mt. Gox, where $460 million in bitcoin was lost.
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Meanwhile, Bithumb made it clear that though a number of its costumers' data were compromised, their passwords were still safe. In a statement (via Brave New Coin), the company explained that the hack was done not in its core servers, but through an employee's PC.
"The employee PC, not the head office server, was hacked. Personal information such as mobile phone and email address of some users were leaked. However, some customers were found to have been stolen from because of the disposable password used in electronic financial transactions," Bithumb explained.
Meanwhile, some of its clients have claimed that they have suffered "financial damage" after the hack. It was also reported that there were those who were victims of "voice phishing." Somebody had allegedly called them and claimed that they were from Bithumb. At the moment, though, no group has come forth to claim responsibility for the cyber attack.
The case has sparked concerns on the safety and security of cryptocurrencies. The rise in hacking incidents done in the digital currency exchange community seems to indicate that criminals have discovered that bitcoins and other digital currencies like Ethereum are steadily taking over the global market.
