Bitcoin Exchange Company Files For Bankruptcy

A South Korean Bitcoin exchange company named Youbit has filed for bankruptcy after it was hacked for the second time in the year 2017. It was before hacked in April 2017 and caused a loss of 4,000 bitcoins.

Youbit has further claimed that the attackers had stolen 17 percent of their local assets on Tuesday( 4.35am local time).

The hackers broke into Youbit’s wallet which was kept online for storing crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. The company said that its offline holdings were still safe and all customers’ assets will be marked down to 75 percent of their value.

Besides this, a statement signed by "all employees" at YouBit was released, saying that it is calling in administrators and working on minimising customers losses.

Comments from Ankush Johar, Director at Infosec Ventures

“Cryptocurrency is becoming extremely popular and this makes it a new favourite for malicious hackers. Organisations that are running such platforms must accept the simple fact your infrastructure is under constant attack and thousands of cybercriminals will be trying to hack into your infrastructure at any point of time and you must prepare accordingly. A pre-emptive Bug Bounty program may help such organisations in making their data secure and prevent such attacks”.

“Users, on the other hand, must also understand the risk of investing in a currency which is under constant attack and stays cautious. One not-so-simple solution that will help you to keep your crypto-currency a bit safer is to locally host a digital wallet in your backyard and avoid online wallets if you have the access to the tech to do so, as doing that will at least take your wallet out of the central targets of hackers though, this also means that you have to then take care of your local wallet in terms of both security and reliability”.