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Bitcoin Japan Security The Almighty Buck

Zaif Cryptocurrency Exchange Suffers $60 Million Hack (zdnet.com) 32

Posted by BeauHD from the hot-to-trot dept.
Hackers were able to steal $60 million worth of company and user funds belonging to the Zaif Japanese cryptocurrency exchange. The breach occurred last week, but the company discovered the hack on Monday, September 17. An anonymous reader shares the report from ZDNet: Investigators are still gathering details, but Zaif said the hack took place on September 14, between 17:00 and 19:00 local time, when the attacker siphoned off three types of cryptocurrencies from the company's "hot wallets." [A "hot wallet" is a term used to describe a cryptocurrency addresses with light security measures where a cryptocurrency exchange keeps funds for immediate transactions, such as cryptocurrency-to-cryptocurrency or cryptocurrency-to-fiat (and vice versa) operations.] Zaif says the hacker stole Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and MonaCoin from its hot wallet, all three worth 6.7 billion Japanese yen (roughly $59.67 million) when combined. Of the 6.7 billion stolen yen, 2.2 billion yen -- 32 percent -- were Zaif funds, while 4.5 billion yen were customer funds. Zaif plans to secure a 5 billion yen loan to pay back affected customers.
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Zaif Cryptocurrency Exchange Suffers $60 Million Hack More

Zaif Cryptocurrency Exchange Suffers $60 Million Hack

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  • Wow (Score:1, Insightful)

    by olsmeister ( 1488789 )
    That is a hack worth doing. That guy is set for life now... if he's smart enough to hang up his spikes and call it quits.

    • Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)

      by chill ( 34294 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2018 @07:59PM (#57345448) Journal

      Assuming they can convert it into real money -- Dollars, Euro, Yen. What are you going to do with $60 million of crypto currency if you can't transfer it to something you can really spend?

      Turning crypto to real is where the danger is -- no anonymity when you show up at the bank.

  • The concept of a HOT wallet is like cash you carry around, it's supposed to a small amount... more possible to get hacked as it's connected to the internet and allowed automated withdrawal. But the system is supposed to keep most money offline via COLD wallet that need human interaction to refill the HOT wallet. 60M is way to much for a HOT wallet.

    • Re:The HOT wallet is not support to have 60M$! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Comrade Ogilvy ( 1719488 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2018 @08:35PM (#57345594)

      I would bet a very large amount of money that most of these exchange hacks are inside jobs. It is probably not an "accident" that so much was in the hot wallet, because one of the people whose jobs it is make intelligent decisions about such things did not want an appropriate amount. Note also how it took multiple days to discover the theft.

      Is it really so hard to monitor the appropriate blockchains and figure out if your hot wallet is being drained?
      Is it really so hard to be notified within 1 hour that there is a huge problem?

      The reason easy and obvious risk mitigation measures were not taken is because someone(s) did not want to mitigate risk.

      Inside job.

    • Blockchain is either convenient or risky. It can not possibly be both. Either you pay higher than credit card fees for small transactions (in which case there is no point), or you have to keep high liquidity in an exchange to have the transaction not take tens of minutes or even hours or days.

      If it is fast because an exchange handles it in house, the house can be hacked/embezzle coins. If it is secure in an offline usb key wallet, then it takes time and a fee to put it on the exchange, another fee to get i

  • Learned my lesson the hard way.

    Sucks, but crypto is cash, and itâ(TM)s unregulated.

    But a hardware wallet and know how to use it.

  • Who's going to secure a loan to pay back clients of a company who had shitty security, engaging in a ponzi schemes?

  • 60 million lucky winners will find the cryptocurrency in random loot boxes on Playstation Classic.

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