Crypto Exchange Bithumb Hacked for Third Time in Two Years; Says Assets Are Safe

Hacks and thefts have long been one of the biggest concerns for cryptocurrency investors and stakeholders. Many well-known cryptocurrencies and exchanges have fallen victim to individuals or groups attacking their reserves. The methods of these attacks have been getting more and more sophisticated.

Unfortunately, many cryptocurrency companies and exchanges have been failing to stop these attacks. This failure is hurting consumer and investor confidence in the crypto space as a whole. The latest cryptocurrency exchange to fall victim of an attack is Bithumb.

This is not the first time Bithumb has been at the receiving end of such a hack. It’s already had its defenses torn down twice already and this makes it a third time in just two years. The South Korean exchange announced that it had been hacked last week and almost $20 million in cryptocurrencies were stolen. Although Bithumb did not reveal the scope and details of the attack at first, others have tracked down the transactions and estimate that $13.4 million in EOS and $6 million in Ripple (XRP)trade were stolen.

The good news for Bithumb’s customers in all of this is the fact that all the stolen digital coins belonged to Bithumb. Their users’ digital coins are safely stored in cold wallets as per a tweet put out by Bithumb:

“We deeply apologize to our members for delaying the cryptocurrency deposit and withdrawal service, we would like to inform you of the circumstances of the grounds and confirm that your assets are safe.”

Bithumb called the attack an “accident involving insiders”. The term made it obvious that the hack was an inside job which might or might not be related to the fact that the news of Bithumb planning to lay off 50% of its staff broke just a couple of weeks ago.

In the announcement, Bithumb commented on the notion further, stating:

“Bithumb exchange is certified ISMS and applied to multi-signature withdrawal scheme. We constantly monitor and block external hacking. However, it was our fault that we only focused on defense of outside attack and lack of verification of internal staff.”

There has been a cloud of suspicion regarding the whole incident ever since Bithumb deleted a series of tweets in which they had put out some facts regarding the hack. Are they trying to hide something or simply fixing a mistake, only time will tell.