The South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology has launched an investigation into the theft of $30 mln from the world's sixth largest crypto exchange Bithumb, Yonhap News reports Wednesday, June 20.
Bithumb, which is the leading crypto exchange in South Korea, temporarily suspended all deposits and payments on the exchange as soon as it had detected the theft.
According to Yonhap, the Ministry has said that as soon as it reported the Bithumb hack, the Korea Internet & Security Agency joined an urgent investigation into the case.
The Ministry now plans to analyze the causes of the theft in cooperation with the police and other agencies.
MIC says it has been investigating the security levels of 21 crypto exchanges between January and March of this year, and has confirmed that most of them have security vulnerabilities.
In 12 exchanges, the MIC found the complete absence of a security system.
In a separate incident earlier this month, hackers stole around $37 mln from another South Korean crypto exchange Coinrail, which ranked 99th largest globally by trade volumes at the time of the theft.
The MIC has said that as of the end of this month, it plans to closely follow those 21 exchanges it has been monitoring for security weaknesses, and ensure they improve their practices by September.
According to representatives from the Korean fraud detection project Sentinel Protocol, Bithumb's hot wallet was hacked on the night of June 19.
Prior to the hack, Bithumb had moved a large amount of Ethereum to cold wallet storage after noticing abnormal access on its servers, also announcing an abrupt server check June 16 "In order to maximize security settings."
Korean Ministry Launches Probe Into Causes of Bithumb Crypto Exchange Hack
gepubliceerd op Jun 20, 2018
by Cointele | gepubliceerd op Coinage
Coinage
Recent nieuws
Alles zien
Blockchain Bites: Bitcoin's Run, Uniswap's Hemorrhaging Value, Anchorage's Banking Bid
Bitcoin is nearing all-time highs in price and market cap last set three years ago.
Japan's megabanks to lead experiment with digital yen
We have, in order, Cheese Bank with a $3.3 million theft, Akropolis with its $2 million loss, Value DeFi with a whopping $6 million exploit and finally Origin Protocol's loss of $7 million.
Number of new Bitcoin addresses spikes amid growing FOMO
Japan's three largest banks, as part of a group of 30 private sector actors, are set to collaborate on an experiment with a digital yen.
Not just Wall Street: Quant trader explains why Bitcoin price is going up
Sam Trabucco, a quantitative trader at Alameda Research, believes four general factors are pushing up the price of Bitcoin.