Insider Attack

Embezzlement Leads to $26 Million Loss and Bankruptcy of Coinbin Exchange

February 20, 2019
Attack Types: 
Insider Attack ,Private Key Leak
Entity Types: 
Exchange ,Custodian
Target Entities: 
Coinbin ,Youbit ,Yapizon

Summary # South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinbin, which took over the previously hacked exchange Youbit, filed for bankruptcy on February 20, 2019, following embezzlement by an employee. The employee, previously the CEO of Youbit and responsible for cryptocurrency balances at Coinbin, was accused of neglecting his duties and embezzling funds. Specifically, he allegedly appropriated the key to an Ethereum wallet and claimed the cryptographic key had been lost. In addition to these events, Youbit was previously hacked twice: in April and December 2017, losing around 4,000 Bitcoin and $35 million, respectively. ...

ShapeShift Exchange Hacked for $230000

March 14, 2016
Attack Types: 
Insider Attack ,Infrastructure Attack ,Wallet Hack
Entity Types: 
Custodian ,Exchange
Target Entities: 
ShapeShift

Summary # Between March 14 and April 9, 2016, the Swiss-based cryptocurrency exchange, ShapeShift, experienced three security breaches. The initial compromise was an insider threat, where an employee responsible for the platform’s security and infrastructure misappropriated funds. Subsequently, this individual provided an external threat actor with critical assets: the source code of ShapeShift’s core system, the IP address of the primary server, an SSH private key, and deployed a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) on a colleague’s workstation. ...