Bitcoin Forum

Major South Korean crypto currency exchange Upbit has notified users of the theft of 342,000 Ether (ETH) from It's hot wallet via a on site notice.

Upbit CEO, Lee Seok-woo has pledged to cover losses (342,000 ETH) through corporate asset and have already moved crypto assets held in its hot wallet to cold storage.

Deposits and withdrawals will take at least two weeks to resume, with Lee Seok-woo promising to inform users as soon as they reopen,

I think there is nothing secure.

Source: CoinTelegraph

Well unless they will cover up the losses, It seems that South Korean exchanges are favorite targets of hackers or maybe some exchanges security are just weak. This is not one of the biggest stolen funds of all but if this happens regularly traders will begin to lose confidence trading in big or small exchanges. 

Well, I'm pretty sure they just pick any exchanges they deem to be hackable plus could bring quite a bit of profit in their pockets. Luckily, they decided to be honest and completely open up with the issue and took responsibility for it. This just goes to show that any vulnerability available to the hackers could easily be taken advantage of, especially with the ever growing community of crypto which seems like a big fat lamb to them.

Also since OP didn't link the article, here (https://cointelegraph.com/news/upbit-promises-swift-reimbursement-theories-over-missing-funds-swell) it is

There is no guarantee that the exchange will always be safe from hacking, there are quite a number of cases where hackers have succeeded in escaping with assets from the exchange and fortunately the upbit is responsible for this incident and replaces it with their company's money reserves.
Hacking cases experienced by upbit must be used as a consideration so that we do not store valuable assets on the exchange, because we do not know when and where hacking events can occur again in other exchanges. Increase awareness by storing your assets in a hardware wallet or in a place that you feel is safe.

Find more information about hackers here (https://etherscan.io/accounts/label/upbit-hack).

Exactly! we have to hold our assets in secure place ( local wallet ) and we can't trust on exchange's security

One of the reasons why online wallets or even exchange platforms are not a good place to keep your funds. Especially if it is a huge amount of money. Hackers are just looking for a good moment and a good target where they can breach the security to steal money. Hardware wallet will always be the safest storage for crypto funds. Never leave your money online.

But having all these Korean exchange being hacked is indeed kinda, odd. Maybe it's because the volume there are quite huge or just simply vuln and can be exploited but I think they need to invest more into security. This is also why when new exchange appear, they should undergo a code review so that it won't be exploited because honestly, some exchanges are lacking their concern in term of security.

Most of the time hackers are taking over the exchanges' wallet that hold tremendous amount of money though, but it's advised to use hardware wallet or if can't desktop wallet. But, a wallet that is not saving the private key generated into the server is relatively side but not advised.

Large exchanges are also often hacked, but they often give investors money back. This is the responsibility and forcing them to do so otherwise they will be sued. Besides, large exchanges often have a lot of big funds and they are always able to compensate. so we should still be trading at large exchanges. When there is a risk, we will still be able to get our money back.

Might be a insider thing. Your security systems is only as secure&trusted as your employees. There is no security system which can prevent your employees stealing from you. Might be an honest hack too but whenever I see an exchange hack, i think the possibility of a bad employee. And somehow they'll never tell you if that was the case.

formerly Binance, and now UPbit. It seems that exchanges are weakening about their security systems and this costs them a lot of money to devise strategies in the future.
There are still a lot of hackers in this market and hopefully in the future exchanges will focus their money and human resources to improve their security systems. so traders can safely deposit their money on exchanges.

I heard it was an inside job ???

There's already a thread that's made earlier than this. You can find it on Service Discussion (Altcoins). The topic to be specific is: Upbit exchange was hacked. 342,000 ETH lost (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5204950.0)

And I have commented about the addresses where those ethereum transfers 2 days ago.

We don't know if this is an inside job, authorities should do an investigation here, but as long as they cover the lost Eth and they secure traders funds, we cannot consider this an exit scam, two bad news in a week the other one is IDAX but Idax is now considered an exit scam, traders should never store their coins in exchanges, it's very risky.

I do not want to talk too much and accuse, how stupid is Upbit losing his money? I only use the logic from which the funds to replace the money, this incident is always the same hacked and then replace it, until now I see a lot of price analysis leading below $ 5k as the lowest, so whether with this kind of news made it helps to drive the panic to touch the target, I always believe that drama is a lot of big people, the possibility is a greed and they benefit, I do not like hacking drama and it is always done over and over at the moment of bitcoin prices like this

It might be down to something simple: like all the Korean exchanges using the same IT specialists to build their exchanges, which means that they all have the same vulnerabilities. And if they don't share what went wrong with each other to fix the holes, the attacks just continue.

Whereas the western exchanges seem to be quite separately and independently built. Some, like Kraken and Coinbase have spent a lot of money on security.

Also heard same too, there is no smoke without a fire.
Upbit were being told to Pay tax of up to $60m back in January and they were hacked today,  perhaps this might be a way of evading tax because such thing happened to bithumb also when they were told to pay tax,  few months after telling them to pay tax, they got hacked.
Glad to hear that They will cover the loss,  so investors needs not to panic

We don't really know the real story behind this, but hoping that UPBIT will prove to their users that this is not inside job or else this will be end of their journey and so far they are not same as IDAX who really intended to run away and up to now the CEO don't know where he is and the office worker were not working on their office anymore and their telegram has been full of porn and shit now.

Do you think that this is fake information that is aimed at manipulating the cryptocurrency market?  I recall 2016, when in the summer, hackers broke into the Bitfinex exchange, after which the price of Bitcoin fell very much.  But if you recall the recent hacker attack on the bank, the reaction of the cryptocurrency market was not so global.

Obviously there is nothing 100% secure especially with these huge multi level corporations who have a lot of workers. There always are some loopholes with their functioning and it's not difficult for these hackers to find these loopholes and steal some money. But I think these things should not be confused as lack of security with bitcoin. Because on an individual level you are pretty much secure with your Bitcoins when you hold them in your private key wallet. Only possible ways to hack are phishing and eavesdropping which can easily be stopped by due care while accessing and using your funds.

hack exchange events often affect the market this drama is often an occurrence and certainly insiders ,I agree with your opinion that this is a manipulation to bring down market value so that it can buy cheaply to take advantage of the next year 2020 which some people consider is a bull run time ,I think emotions play strategy to make people panic

My biggest question is whether many of these heists are state sanctioned hacks.

Governments have been documented openly buying up zero day vulnerabilities for decades. They own stockpiles of undocumented and unpatched exploits which could allow them to penetrate systems that would otherwise be deemed rock solid. State based insistence of backdoors being built into everything doesn't help matters.

If ordinary crooks stole $50 million in ETH from a south korean crypto exchange, I would think their chances of being caught are decent.

But if it was conducted on behalf of a state with immunity to prosecution, it might better explain how many of these heists would appear to be planned & executed by highly trained professionals with an unlimited amount of resources and protection which ensure they're never caught or prosecuted.

At a certain point governments, banks and hedge funds could be more profitable hiring hackers to steal money than they would trading in markets or exchanges. If I'm thinking of this right now, I wouldn't be surprised if they realized it 50 years ago and have been working towards that goal ever since.

In addition to this, there are rogue nations like north korea who are under economic sanctions who could hack their neighbors with impunity and never be held accountable. South korea could avoid releasing news north korea was responsible for this type of act if only to avoid an appearance of weakness or incompetence, if that were the case.

Its been said as much as 80% of electronic heists are inside jobs, statistically. Which can also mean disgruntled, former or fired employees. I think the CEO attempting to cover losses decreases probability of that.

They used their cold storage. That means there is something secure.
Exchanges are the ones prone to attacks and it did happen.

This is also why I think you should never put all your coins there.
Just deposit the number which you think could be risked and not everything. Just the right amount to trade.

I've been reading most discussions that talks about exchanges safety, all simple idea always shared here was never ever store your valuable asset at any exchanges. Even how reputable it was, there's a random situations which you can't prevent to occur, the hacking of your funds is always potentially happening.
We need to consider that seriously, before it's too late and indeed you should trade only when it's needed.

We have been seeing this kind of accidents from the very beginning that a exchange gets hacked when it reaches a specific amount of money.
Most of it happens when people started to trust and then boom it get hacked.

I do not know why people still trust some exchanges with that much money.

no . hacking does not work that way  . an exchange or almost any websites can get hack no matter how much money it already raised or no matter how much trust/reputation it already gained  . the reason why people still trust exchange with thier money is because they need it to trade or to buy cryptos . hacking incidents like this does not mean that all exchange are indangered now  . of course exchanges also tighten thier  fire walls so that hackers cannot penetrate easily

Sad news to all who got lose due to this hacking that's why as much as possible I don't leave investment in any exchanges unless it's too big amount or that coin I have is already considered shitcoin since hackers target is exchanges since like in real banks they are considered bank of cryptos.

This is a warning, a piece of advice for a long time now and people still don't believe in this? Then after these people will again doubt the security of bitcoin and other crypto currencies even if those don't deserve those blame. Exchanges are not really a great place to store your balances, better keep it in a cold storage.

How can you be sure that the hacking is a drama though? do you think announcing of being hacked is as easy as just speaking and then things done? ofcourse not. They will be interrogated by the police if someone is reporting them and they need to provide reimbursement. If that's really a drama then that'd be the most effortful drama in the history of exchange hacking but it's most likely not when they goes far to provide reimbursement and even the announcement itself already damaging their reputation.

I like the headline, another crypto exchange hacked! We knew that will happen again, it was just a question of time, and here it is. I don't know who is surprised about that, and like in most cases we believe that its an inside job. If nothing else we can speculate what happened, but I doubt that we will ever find out, like in many previous cases.
Once again I had luck, I didn't use Upbit exchange, I feel sorry for people who lost some money there, but I believe that Koreans are honest, they even said they will give money from their own pocket, so people who had some money there should be ok I guess.

Would be great if they actually cover the losses. 340k+ ether is not an easy figure to lose, considering that it's also on a slow rise lately. It goes to show that there are still some facets of exchange security that operators need to cover, else this will just continue happening and hackers will just repeat the process as long as they see vulnerabilities.

Either way, respect to the CEO for covering it up and actually doing something to address the issue and not just apologizing to its customers.

Every couple of months we will be hearing a new exchange hack and millions of coins being stolen by the hackers and there is no clear idea on how we will stop hearing these huge losses.

Does that mean that none of the depositors will be loosing any money and if that is the case it is a great thing and a rapid change from the past hacks where they will shut the exchange citing huge lose and the depositors will be sharing the loss.

Was noticing the same thing. Several times I read about hacks in South Korea, another one was in Japan if I remember correctly.

I keep my assets at Bitstamp though and it's not in Asia (not for long though, will sell everything soon, bar 0.05 that I will keep just in case), but hope Bitstamp will be fine for another two or three months before I withdrew 98% of my funds from there. They pay me from a bank in Luxemburg if I remember correctly.

To be sincere I have never used those asian exchanges. Generally they are very shady and not licensed with any authority. I'd much rather use some of the trusted american or european ones like Gemini or Kraken. Traders which play with those asian bucket shops deserve their destiny - don't want to be rude, but that's the truth. You're taking unnecessary risks when dealing with them.

the loss of 342,000 ETH in the upbit caused quite a stir at the end of this year. I honestly think that prices are soon dumping. but, seeing the upbit team who are professional and responsible, I think it will be all right.
in addition, many people associate this with the "end-of-year scenario" for crypto. however, there is other news about Idax exchangers who say that the CEO disappeared with his private keys.

Upbit have confirmed about their exchange market hacked more than 342k ETH, until two weeks later not available for withdrawing and deposit balance to Upbit account and waiting about their announcement when market back to normal, I am still not believe when have exchange market with higher security can hacked by some one with biggest amount more than 342k ETH,

I've never used upbit exchange but good thing they are able to compensate their users. But it is hard to believe that after the compensation, there are still left fund for upbit knowing the amount they have lost. It does not matter which country the exchange is resided as long as it is secured, it won't matter after all.

Hey no one deserves to be in that situation, you're sounding like a racist with that. You condem asian exchanges as if there were never an incident of american and european exchanges hacking. Even the big ones have holes that can be breached. Even Binance has a history of stolen funds. So what's your point?

it's always done every few years, it would be difficult to understand because I don't have full proof of it, but I'm sure it's just their drama where the people inside do it too, I don't force anyone to believe me, I just have their own thoughts about that

I'm betting it's hackers backed by the North Korean government. There have been reports of this going back at least to 2017, likely related to avoiding economic sanctions: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/north-korea-hackers-linked-to-cryptocurrency-cyberattack-on-south-korea.html


Determining whether a group like Lazarus was involved will probably take a more time-intensive forensic analysis of the attack. We'll probably find out down the road, like we did with a number of other North Korea-based attacks targeting crypto.

I think hackers will not stop due to all of these news. I mean when they are successful it gets heard and the other hackers gets hyped about the potential and they try as well. These are HUGE exchanges, even if they are not binance, we are talking about millions of dollars, what other website can you hack to get so much money? Without a proper trace neither, it is totally untraceable if you know what you are doing.

The best case we have right now is to stop promoting and letting everyone know the hacking. Sure, website itself will notify everyone but nowhere else should talk about it and make it a media blackout. I know I am writing and making it more known as well and contributor to the problem but I just wanted to offer maybe a possible solution.

It is the biggest truth of technology world that no system can be hundred percent secure and those that hold high values are the major targets of criminal hackers. Moreover, it is not like the hacker woke up one day, made few clicks and goes down the website or exchange. A lot of days, even months might get spend to make one hack reality. The best is to choose exchanges that take responsibility of such compromises.

Obviously hackers wait and analyses the websites very closely and waits for only one mistake to happen and then they do their attack.
What I was saying earlier is that you just keep your coins secure on some cold wallet or at least in your own wallet and never keep coins on exchanges, Who knows when they can get hacked?

Regards
TEX-LXRY

The safest would be an airgapped hardware wallet. It's been proven over and over again that exchanges are not safe and it is best not to leave funds lying idle there for a long period of time.