The pirates behind the biggest "crypto-hack" in history, which hit the Japanese exchange platform Coincheck, managed to clear 40% of XEMs they could steal last January.
Nearly half of stolen XEMs reportedly laundered
CoinCheck logoIn an article published yesterday, the business daily Nikkei reports research conducted by L Plus , a Tokyo-based consulting firm. This reveals that the pirates of the Coincheck platform have already managed to whitewash 200 million XEMs , or 40% of the corners on which they could get their hands. These assets corresponded, according to the rates in effect during the writing of this article, to about 89.1 million .
But they probably managed to harvest a lot less. Indeed, L Plus believes that these funds were likely laundered through darknet site on which the hackers probably agree to accept prices far below those of the market. The reason ? They did not have the opportunity to liquidate them on "legitimate" trading platforms - platforms that all seem to have followed the recommendations of the NEM Foundation , which asked them not to accept these digital assets.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department reportedly mobilized 100 officers to investigate the piracy. These work teams managed to identify suspicious activities, which started several weeks before the flight . It seems that the pirates are infiltrated servers Coincheck through phishing emails sent to employees of the platform. They were able to obtain the private key of their NEM portfolio , which contained 500 million XEMs - $ 530 million in piracy, but more than $ 223 million today.
A source close to the survey told Nikkei that the laundered funds, which were mostly exchanged for Bitcoins, should then be exchanged for currency fiat. However, it is still impossible to know if such exchanges have been made.
If the identity of pirates remains a mystery, Seoul believes that North Korea could be the origin . It evokes similarities between these attacks and other hacks that had been carried out by hackers backed by the North Korean government.
Increased monitoring on platforms
Financial Services Agency JapanIn the aftermath of this hack, Japanese financial regulators decided to impose closer monitoring on local trading platforms . These, for their part, wanted to take their own initiative, announcing that they intended to form a body of self-regulation . If it were approved by the government, it would have the power to enforce the rules that it could have put in place.
For its part, Coincheck announced yesterday the resumption of withdrawals and exchanges , after she was able to thoroughly review its security systems.
The platform has also started paying customers victims of piracy , that would be the number of 260,000 . These will be cleared in Japanese Yen at JPY 89 (about US $ 0.83) per coin - nearly double the current XEM / JPY pair .