Bithumb hacked through employee system as South Korean financial firms face cyberattacks

Bithumb, South Korea’s second-largest crypto exchange, said earlier Wednesday an outsider broke into the internal mobile system its employees use to work and message each other and that personal information was taken.

No crypto funds were reported lost as of Asian afternoon hours. Bithumb is the second-largest exchange in South Korea by trading volumes.

The exchange found the intrusion on Tuesday and reported to the Korea Internet & Security Agency and the Personal Information Protection Commission, according to Korean media. It told Yonhap it was analyzing the exact scope, “including the possibility of member information being involved.”

It said the breached system runs separately from its trading platform, so “customer virtual assets cannot be accessed through this breach.” It has not said whether deposits or withdrawals were affected or how many people’s data was exposed.

Bithumb was one of three financial firms the Financial Supervisory Service said it was assessing on Wednesday. Daishin Securities said personal and credit information for 38,490 of its customers leaked in an outside attack. Mirae Asset Global Investments said it blocked abnormal access to some of its web systems and that investor information was not affected.

“I understand that major financial investment companies experienced overall hacking incidents yesterday,” FSS Governor Lee Chan-jin told a meeting with bank holding company chairs. Earlier in the month he said cyberattacks had hit 16 South Korean financial firms as of Oct. 14.

Meanwhile, this is a second hit to Bithumb’s controls this year.

In February it mistakenly credited customers with 620,000 BTC, worth more than $40 billion at the time, instead of 620,000 won. CEO Lee Jae-won blamed the error on weak internal controls at the time, saying the exchange was “acutely aware of the deficiency in internal system control.”