Another strike? Looks like Bithumb cryptocurrency exchange has been hacked a third time in the past two years, except this time hackers believed to have made off with almost $20 million.
Bithumb is a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange which has admitted to being hacked, again. This is now the third time in the past three years. Hot wallets in the cryptocurrency world are accounts used to support real-time transactions. Recently the company detected abnormal from these accounts.
Hackers made off with around three million EOS worth $13.4 million at the time of the hack and another 20 million Ripple coins, worth another $6 million. The company didn’t actually disclose this information, but the industry insiders were able to track down the large transactions leaving the exchange’s wallet. The only fortunate news is that the funds were stolen from a company owned wallet and did not affect direct users.
In July of 2017 hackers stole around $7 million in Bitcoin and Etereum while the second time was in June 2018 when they made off with $31 million worth of Ripple. The second hack was attributed to the Lazarus Group which is a code name for North Korea’s cyber-espionage unit. They are well known for stealing funds form real world banks and cryptocurrency platforms.