The world’s sixth largest cryptocurrency exchange based out of South Korea, Bithumb has announced on 19th of June that their platform has been hacked and cryptocurrencies to the tune of $ 30 million have been stolen.
*All deposit and withdrawal service will be stopped to make sure the security. We will keep notice you of the restart of the service. We apologize for your inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.
— Bithumb (@BithumbOfficial) June 20, 2018
All deposits and payment transactions have been suspended since and all cryptocurrency assets have been shifted to a cold wallet for security reasons.
Due to some unauthorised and suspicious transactions and accesses, the officials at Bithumb moved a sizeable amount of Ethereum assets to a cold wallet. And reports suggest that the actual hack and theft occured on the night of 19th June and that Ripple is one among the many leading crypto coins that have been stolen.
Server Check
When Bithumb noticed these abnormal accesses on many account that held Ethereum assets, they had announced a server check to ‘maximize security settings’ on the 16th of June.
The server check was supposed to last close to three hours in the early hours of the morning, prior to market open. However, the server check, according to reports doing the rounds, lasted a lot longer than the scheduled time.
Second Hack In South Korea
The hack at Bithumb happens to be the second one this month, preceded by the Coinrail hack. In the Coinrail hack, cryptocurrencies worth $40 million USD were lost to hackers.
The slump that the market took, in which Bitcoin prices went to its lowest value so far this year, is attributed to the hack. However, around the same time the CFTC had also announced a massive investigation into the leading exchanges of the market.
Exchange To Compensate For Losses
The hack that is said to have taken place last night, ie 19th of June, led to the loss of $30 million dollars worth of cryptocurrencies and has affected a large number of users on the exchange.
Officials at Bithumb have released a statement that all users that have been affected by this breach will be compensated in kind, over the next couple of months.
More details are awaited from the exchange so as to throw more light on the happenings of the hack and how they intend to compensate the losses they have incurred.
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