Bitcoin Exchange Company Files for Bankruptcy After Being Hacked for Second Time in a Year

A South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, Youbit, has filed for bankruptcy after it was hacked for the second time in 2017. The company was previously hacked in April 2017 causing a loss of 4,000 bitcoins.

Youbit has claimed that the attackers had stolen 17 percent of their local assets last Tuesday (4.35am local time).

The hackers broke into Youbit’s wallet which was kept online for storing cyrptoassests like Bitcoin and Ethereum. The company said that its offline holdings were still safe, and all customers’ assets will be marked down to 75 percent of their value.

A statement signed by "all employees" at YouBit was released, saying that it is calling in administrators and working on minimising customers losses.

Ankush Johar, director at Infosec Ventures, said: "Cryptocurrency is becoming extremely popular and this makes it a new favourite for malicious hackers. Organisations that are running such platforms must accept the simple fact your infrastructure is under constant attack and thousands of cyber criminals will be trying to hack into your infrastructure at any point of time and you must prepare accordingly. A pre-emptive Bug Bounty program may help such organisations in making their data secure and prevent such attacks.

"Users, on the other hand, must also understand the risk of investing in a currency which is under constant attack and stay cautious. One not-so-simple solution that will help you to keep your crypto-currency a bit safer is to locally host a digital wallet in your backyard and avoid online wallets if you have the access to the tech to do so, as doing that will at least take your wallet out of the central targets of hackers though, this also means that you have to then take care of your local wallet in terms of both security and reliability."