Bitcoins worth `20 crore stolen from exchange in India's biggest crypto theft
13 April 2018 5:35 PM GMT
NEW DELHI: Nearly 438 bitcoins worth over Rs 20 crore were stolen from a top exchange firm in India in what is being billed as the biggest cryptocurrency theft in the country so far.
Coinsecure, the Delhi-based cryptocurrency exchange, has filed an FIR with the cyber cell accusing its CSO, Amitabh Saxena, of siphoning off the money from the firm's wallet.
The exchange has urged the government to seize Saxena's passport, fearing that he may leave the country.
A case has been registered under IPC sections and Section 66 of the IT Act. The exchange, which has over two lakh users across the country, found that all the bitcoins that were stored offline had vanished. It was later found that the private keys — the password that is kept by the company and is stored offline — were leaked online, leading to the hack.
The company tried to trace the hackers, but found that all the data logs of the affected wallets had been erased, leaving no trails about where the bitcoins were transferred. The website of the company has since then remained shut.
On Thursday night, the company confirmed the hack to their users through a message posted on the website.
"We regret to inform you that our bitcoin funds have been exposed and seem to have been siphoned out to an address that is outside our control. Our system itself has never been compromised or hacked, and the current issue points towards losses caused during an exercise to extract bitcoins to distribute to our customers," the company stated.
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