Home crypto news Cryptocurrency Exchange Coinsecure Hacked – Bitcoins Worth 20 Crore Were Stolen
Cryptocurrency Exchange Coinsecure Hacked – Bitcoins Worth 20 Crore Were Stolen
Whether it's Facebook or an Online digital wallet, user's security and privacy is becoming a major concern nowadays. Recently a well known leading cryptocurrency exchange, Coinsecure has undergone through a horrible hack.
It's reported that On 8th April the coinsecure's system was compromised. As a result, 438.31 bitcoins worth Rs 20 crore has been stolen from user's wallet and transferred to an account that's out of coinsecure's control. It came under notice when users reported that they were unable to trace their online funds that was stored in their wallet. Around 11,000 customers are said to be affected by the theft.
Coinsecure confirmed the hack and released an official statement, "Dear users, We regret to inform you that our Bitcoin funds have been exposed and seem to have been siphoned out to an address that is outside our control."
"Our system itself has never been compromised or hacked, and the current issue points towards losses caused during an exercise to extract BTG to distribute to our customers. Our CSO, Dr. Amitabh Saxena, was extracting BTG and he claims that funds have been lost in the process during the extraction of the private keys."
Official Statement By Coinsecure
The coinsecure official site has shut down since the time as the company's servers have been seized to ascertain the extent of the hack. The company is working hard to recover all the lost funds. But all the data logs of the hacked wallet's transactions have been erased by the hackers. So it makes hard to trace where the stolen bitcoins have been transferred.
Also Coinsecure has lodged and FIR on 10th April. The case was registered under IPC sections and Section 66 of the IT Act by coinsecure for the incident. Senior officers of Delhi Police's Cyber Cell confirmed the same.
Copy of Lodged FIR
Mohit Kalra, Founder and CEO of Coinsecure suspects an insider's hand in this case. For the same, the company shared their suspicions with the Cyber Cell.
What Actually Happened?
All users have a public wallet address and a privatekey that contains 51 alphanumeric characters. By using public wallet address, anyone can deposit funds. But without having the private key, no one even the user can withdraw bitcoins.
As per cybersecurity specialists, someone exposed the bitcoin wallet private keys online, that were stored by the company. Also, the private keys were kept in the same manner for more than 12 hours that caused the hack.
The FIR report states, "As the private keys are kept with Dr. Amitabh Saxena, we feel that he is making a false story to divert our attention and he might have a role to play in this entire incident. The incident reported by Dr. Amitabh Saxena does not seem convincing to us."
"Dr.Amitabh Saxena also has an Indian passport and he might ply out of the country soon. Therefore, his passport should be seized so he cannot fly out of the country"
Also in the official statement, coinsecure noted: "irrespective of funds being recovered, we re-assured all our customers that you will be indemnified from our personal funds."
Our Advice – Whether you've bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. You should move them to an offline wallet in which the private key is only owned by you to keep your virtual digital assets secure.