South Korean Police Reports Crypto Hacking

Lawmaker Cho Won-jin has revealed a report submitted to the South Korean Government, entitled “Status and Measure of Hacking Damage of Virtual Currency Exchange in the Last Three Years”, which shows that about 112 billion won (approximately 99 million USD) had been illegally withdrawn from seven crypto exchange hacking cases since 2016. Boan News maintains that the money appropriated through hacking cryptocurrency exchanges has been increasing at an alarmingly steady pace.

The Korean Digital Times added:

From 2015 to 2018, there have been 158 cases of hacking of virtual currency personal wallets, in particular, 91 cases this year. However, [only] in six cases were arrests made.

There were also 52 reported incidents of wallet hacks, in the last year alone. Since the popularity of cryptocurrency and the subsequent mode of payment is rather hassle-free and is on the rise, these kinds of losses cannot be incurred again. The South Korean Government to remedy this situation and it has already started conduction security inspections. Ten such crypto exchanges were inspected between September and December of last year, twenty-one between January and March of this year. Many security issues have been since identified. Min Kyung-Wook said that hacking accidents occurred even after prior security checks had been conducted. Three such Crypto exchanges were hacked, even after the completion of security checks as cryptocurrency exchanges are always exposed to cyber threat.

Three such crypto exchanges were hacked a second time after they were inspected by the government. Youbit had an inspection in last year’s October and was hacked again on December 27^th. Similarly, Conrail, which was inspected in this years’ February has been hacked again on June 10^th. The last victim has been Bithumb, which is one of the largest crypto exchanges of South Korea, which in spite of inspections twice by regulators, was hacked on June 19^th.