Concerns over 2nd Damage

Some customers’ personal information of Bithumb, the largest bitcoin and digital currency trading platform in Korea, was leaked.
Some customers’ personal information of Bithumb, the largest bitcoin and digital currency trading platform in Korea, was leaked.

 

The prosecution has launched a probe into a suspected cyberattack against Bithumb, a digital currency exchange in Korea.

According to the state-run Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) on July 3, some Bithumb customers’ personal information was leaked. Accordingly, the KISA and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) has conducted a preliminary investigation into the case and the prosecution is also on the case in cooperation with them. An official from the KISA said, “Prosecutors have launched a probe into the case and will release investigation results in a few days.”

According to industry sources, Bithumb recently realized that one of its employees' home personal computers was hacked and personal information, including cellphone number and e-mail address, of about 20,000 customers, about 3 percent of its customers, had been compromised. In this regard, a Bithumb spokesperson said, “Since all the information, such as customers’ account numbers and passwords, are encrypted and saved only in Bithumb’s internal secure network server, it can be leaked in principle. Our customers’ Korean won and digital currency deposits are safely stored and we will pay for damages when monetary damage occurs.” Still, some of the customers claimed their digital currency account numbers and passwords are leaked and they even suffered financial damage. They show the movement in internet cafes to file class action lawsuit against Bithumb.

Bithumb, the largest bitcoin and digital currency trading platform in the country, has annual transactions of hundreds of billions of won. The cumulative amount of bitcoins traded at Bithumb last year were estimated at 2 trillion won (US$1.74 billion). 

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