South Korean Ministry Investigates Into Bithumb Crypto Exchange Hack
The South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology (MIC) has started an investigation concerning the theft of $30 mln from the world’s 6th biggest crypto trade Bithumb, Yonhap News reports Wednesday, June 20.
Bithumb, which is the main crypto exchange in South Korea, incidentally suspended all deposits and installments on the exchange when it had identified the theft.
As indicated by Yonhap, the Ministry has said that when it revealed the Bithumb hack, the Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA) joined an urgent study concerning the case. The Ministry presently plans to look into the reasons for the theft in participation with the police and different organizations.
MIC says it has been researching the security levels of 21 crypto exchanges from January to March of this current year and has affirmed that the majority of them have security vulnerabilities.
These shortcomings incorporate deficient network isolation, a lack of monitoring systems for strange or suspicious activities, and insufficient cryptographic key and password security management. The MIC found the complete absence of a security system in 12 exchanges.
In a different episode recently, programmers stole around $37 mln from another South Korean crypto trade Coinrail, which positioned 99th biggest worldwide in terms of trade volumes during the theft. As indicated by Yonhap, the MIC has said that the change measures recommended to Coinrail have not been legitimately executed during the study and that it presently plans to monitor Bithumb’s own reaction.
Moreover, the MIC has said that at the end of this current month, it wants to nearly take after those 21 exchanges it has been observing for security shortcomings, and guarantee they enhance their practices by September.
As indicated by agents from the Korean fraud detection project Sentinel Protocol, Bithumb’s hot wallet was hacked the evening of June 19.
Before the hack, Bithumb had moved a lot of Ethereum to cold wallet storage in the wake of seeing irregular access on its servers, also reporting a sudden server check June 16 “in order to maximize security settings.”
As Cointelegraph announced, the exchange has said it will compensate clients that were victims of the hack:
“We checked that some of the cryptocurrencies valued about $30,000,000 were stolen. Those stolen cryptocurrencies will be covered from Bithumb and all of the assets are being transferred to a cold wallet.”
