South Korea cryptocurrency exchange Youbit shuts down after second hack in 2017

The South Korea Cryptocurrency Exchange Youbit has gone bankrupt after suffering a major cyber attack for the second time this year.

The South Korea Cryptocurrency Exchange Youbit shuts down after suffering a major cyber attack for the second time this year. The company announced bankrupt on Tuesday after being hacked for the second time in the last eight months, the company declared it had lost 17 percent of its assets in the last attack.

This is the first time that a cryptocurrency exchange based in South Korean has gone bankrupt.

Eight months ago hackers stole nearly 4,000 bitcoin (5.5 billion won ($5 million) at the time of the hack) that accounted for nearly 40 percent of the Youbit exchange’s total assets.

The company blamed North Korea for the attack.

“We will close all trades, suspend all deposits or withdrawals and take steps for bankruptcy,” reads the statement issued by the company after the last attack.

In order to minimize the economic impact of the customers, all the clients will have their cryptocurrency assets marked down by 25 percent, in this way Youbit wants to cover the losses selling the remaining assets and using insurance.

The South Korean market for virtual currencies has become one of the most active,  considering that whose trades account for some 20 percent of global Bitcoin transactions. More than one million South Koreans already invested in Bitcoin.

Analysts observed that the demand is very high, for this reason, prices for the unit are around 20 percent higher than in the US.

While global bitcoin prices continue to increase, threat actors are focusing their interests on the virtual currencies.

Recently security experts from Secureworks revealed the Lazarus APT group launched a spearphishing campaign against a London cryptocurrency company.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – hacking, Youbit)

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