GEC NEWS WIREThe largest bitcoin and ether exchange in South Korea by volume, Bithumb, was hacked. Monetary losses from compromised accounts have started to surface, and are quickly reaching into the billions of won.
With a reported 75.7% share of the South Korean bitcoin market volume, Bithumb is one of the five largest bitcoin exchanges in the world and hosts over 13,000 bitcoins worth of trading volume daily, or roughly 10 percent of the global bitcoin trade.
The exchange also hosts the world’s largest ether market. While trade in the South Korean won currently makes up the fourth largest currency market for bitcoin, trailing the US dollar, Chinese yuan and Japanese yen, the won market is Ethereum’s largest. Bithumb accounts for around 44 percent of South Korean ether trading.
Hackers succeeded in grabbing the personal information of 31,800 Bithumb website users, including their names, mobile phone numbers and email addresses. The exchange claims that this number represents approximately three percent of customers.
Pete Banham, Cyber Resilience Expert at Mimecast, commented “This cryptocurrency heist is a prime example of why firms need to think about the sensitive information employees have access to in a remote working world. Assume home PCs are or will be compromised when designing your data protection strategy. Ongoing security training needs to be balanced with effective data loss prevention techniques that can identify sensitive data leaving an organisation. Managing secure remote access to data is challenging, but requires careful consideration with regards to your risk appetite.”
