South Korea’s cryptocurrency exchange, Bithumb, was attacked by hackers, making it the second South Korean cryptocurrency exchange to be ransacked. According to the exchange, the hackers managed to bypass its system’s security layers, and scooted off with approximately US$31.5 million (~RM140 million) worth of cryptocurrency.
The hack forced Bithumb to put up a notice on its site, saying that it had stopped all trading after it had discovered the intrusion and began transferring all of its remaining assets into a “safe cold wallet” that was offline. It also said that it would fully compensate all of its customers affected by the hack.
According to Coinmarketcap.com, Bithumb is the sixth busiest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, and handles more than 37 types of virtual currencies.
As mentioned earlier, Bithumb was the second cryptocurrency exchange to be hacked within this month. Last week, another South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, Coinrail, was also hacked. Coinrail lost US$28 million (~RM112 million) in the attack. Additionally, the attack also saw the value of Bitcoin drop from its average of RM30000, and is now hovering between the RM25000 and RM27000 mark.
(Source: Reuters, CCN, The Guardian)
