Seoul: South Korea suspects that the theft of $7 million in bitcoin and ethereum stolen in February 2017 from its Cryptocurrency exchange has involvement of criminals based in North Korea.
It is expected that North Korea may have carried out the attack in response to financial sanctions put in place as a result of its development of nuclear weaponry.
It is estimated that the funds that would have been worth around $7 million at the time of theft would now be valued at around $82.7 million.
The hackers had not only stolen bitcoins in the attack but also made off with the personal information of over 30,000 users, and apparently demanded a ransom of $5.5 million from the proprietors of Bithumb.
According to a report from Chosun, the Company did not take enough precautions to protect its users, given that private data was unencrypted.
On December 13, the government had imposed $55,000 in fines on the firm.
This attack is a warning to the governments across the world because the criminal activity associated with cryptocurrencies is growing in prominence.
‘Nicehash’, a Bitcoin mining marketplace was recently hit by an attack in which $64 million worth of cryptocurrency went missing.