According to a report from Yonhap News, Bithumb was hacked to the tune of "billions of won". For some context, 1 billion won is equal to roughly $870,000 USD.
Therefore, this wouldn't be anywhere near one of the largest hacks we have seen as of late, but it is a bit disturbing that it happened on one of the more popular exchanges.
Bithumb is based in South Korea and according to Motherboard, it is one of the busiest exchanges in the world.
On Tuesday it checked in as the 4th busiest and today (Wednesday) it checked in as the number 1 busiest exchange globally when accounting for the total volume of all virtual currencies traded daily.
As you can see, this was no small exchange.
That is where things continue to be a little scary.
According to reports, it is looking like potentially over 30,000 accounts could have been compromised.
Luckily it appears that the head server was not compromised. Instead it appears that a single employee computer was compromised as opposed to the exchange's core servers.
This was the official statement regarding the hack:
"The employee PC, and 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 claims that user passwords were not stolen due to the hack as has been the case in some instances. Instead personal information was likely compromised.
Specially, some of the customers of Bithumb that lost money were said to be victims of "voice phishing", which is where a scammer called them up and pretended to work for Bithumb in order to scam them out of their funds.
South Korea's Internet and Security Agency has been investigating after some customers said they lost money in the attack.
As we have seen trading volume and prices explode over the last 6 months, we have also seen a sharp rise in scammers looking to take advantage.
From malware attacks, to exchange hacks, to phishing attacks, hackers and scammers are finding all sorts of new ways to enrich themselves.
For those of you not wanting to see any form of regulation, one benefit of regulation is less of these types of hacks. They may not be able to prevent all of them, but they may be able to set up safe guards to help protect against them or even help make whole the ones that are harmed.
Either way, we can fully expect these types of things to keep escalating as the price keeps appreciating. Where the money is, there will be people trying to get a piece of it.
Stay informed my friends!
Sources:
http://www.businessinsider.com/south-korean-bitcoin-exchange-bithumb-hacked-ethereum-2017-7
Image Sources:
https://themerkle.com/allcrypt-bitcoin-exchange-hacked-over-40-btc-in-funds-stolen/
http://steemnews.online/bithumb-south-koreas-largest-cryptocurrencies-exchange-house-has-been-hacked/
http://thehackernews.com/2013/11/bitcashcz-bitcoin-exchange-hacked-money.html
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