Coinrail lost $40 million in a cyberattack

Summary #

In June 2018, Coinrail, a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, was hacked. During the hack, the attackers managed to steal about $40 million worth of cryptocurrencies from hot wallets.

Attackers #

The identity of the attackers has not been publicly disclosed.

Losses #

Coinrail lost 30 percent of the tokens the exchange was housing (nearly $40 million worth), including:

• $20 million worth of NPXS
• $14 million of ATX
• $6 million DENT
• $1 million TRON

Timeline #

• June 10, 2018: Coinrail reported a hack. Trading is suspended.
• June 11, 2018: Coinrail reveals that approximately 30% of its total coin reserves have been stolen. 70% of its total coin reserves have been moved to an offline cold wallet.
• July 15, 2018: Coinrail resumed service with offers to recover the stolen cryptocurrencies.

Security Failure Causes #

Weak operational security practices: According to the local police, the hack happened due to a lack of efficient security protocols.

Insider threat or social engineering: Networking experts believed that the breach was made successful by involuntary support from a machine inside the company that had admin-level access to the internal system.