Cryptocurrencies Black Friday – Japan-based digital exchange Coincheck hacked

It is a black Friday for cryptocurrencies, after the news of the hack of the Japan-based digital exchange Coincheck the value of major cryptocurrencies dropped.

It is a black Friday for cryptocurrencies, the news of the hack of the Japan-based digital exchange Coincheck had a significant impact on their value.

Coincheck was founded in 2012, it is one of the most important cryptocurrency exchange in Asia.

The Coincheck suspended the operations of deposits and withdrawals for all the virtual currencies except bitcoin, the exchange announced it was investigating an “unauthorised access” to the exchange.

According to the company, the hackers stole worth half a billion US dollars of NEM, the 10th biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

The news of the incident has a significant impact on the NEM value that dropped more than 16 percent in 24 hours.

“At 3 am (1800 GMT) today, 523 million NEMs were sent from the NEM address of Coincheck. It’s worth 58 billion yen based on the calculation at the rate when detected,” said Coincheck COO Yusuke Otsuka.

“We’re still examining how many of our customers are affected,”

NEM Charts – CoinMarketCap.com

The experts at the exchange are investigating the security breach to find out whether it was from Japan or another country.

Coincheck discovered the incident at 11.25 am and notified the suspension of trading for all cryptocurrencies apart from bitcoin via Twitter.

In February 2014, Mt. Gox suspended trading and filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors.

At the time, the company was handling over 70% of all bitcoin transactions worldwide, it announced that approximately 850,000 bitcoins ($450 million at the time) belonging to customers and the company were stolen.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Coincheck, Security Breach)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.