One of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges have been hacked and is under investigation after a bithumb employees pc has been hacked to acsess private accoint information of users on the bithumb exchange.
Bithumb based in south korea said "details of more 30,000 of its customers were stolen as a result of this hack
Bithumb has promised compensation.
But the Korea Internet and Security Agency, a local government-empowered watchdog, has launched an inquiry into the matter, according to the Yonhap news agency.
Bithumb allows its members to buy and sell the virtual currencies Bitcoin and Ethereum. It is South Korea's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, based on recent trading volumes, and one of the five largest in the world.
The breach is reported to have occurred in February, and is said to have involved an employee's home PC rather than computer servers at the firm's headquarters.
Bithumb is reported to have discovered the breach only on 29 June and reported it to the authorities the next day.
Although a notice posted to the company's site said the leaked data did not contain passwords, dozens of customers have reported receiving follow-up scam calls and texts in June that persuaded them to share their accounts' authentication codes.
Bithumb has promised initially to cover losses of up to 100,000 won ($86; £67) per customer, and to add to this once it has been able to verify individual losses.
But it is unclear whether victims will be compensated in full
claimed to have lost 1.2bn won ($1.04m; £806,000).
At present, virtual currencies are not regulated by South Korea's financial authorities and efforts to address the matter have made little progress
HEADS UP
For safety storeing any cryptocurrency with a hardware backed wallet or paper wallet where it cannot be acsessed through the internet without the hardware stored wallet is highly recommended for any cryptocurrency holders as we have repeatedly seen several exchanges get hacked no matter how large the may be
