One of the largest pirated bitcoins exchange sites in South Korea ( English )

Users of the Bithumb interchange file complaints for the leakage of their data and theft of their money.

At least several hundreds of thousands of euros: this is the temporary booty of a piracy that touched, in South Korea, a site allowing to buy or sell this virtual currency. On June 29, more than 30,000 users of Bithumb, the fourth largest bitcoins exchanger in the world, were hit, reports the BraveNewCoin specialty site. About 100 clients filed a complaint.

"It's not the central servers that have been hacked, but the computer of an employee," Bithumb quotes as quoted by the main Korean economic magazine, Maeil Kyung Jae. "The personal information of some users have leaked, but the funds of bitcoins have not been affected. "

THE FOLLOWING AFTER THAT ADVERTISING

Users say their e-mails and phone numbers were used by hackers to contact them directly and scam them. According to the testimony of one of the victims on Kyunghyang Biz, a false "employee of Bithumb" would have called him under the pretext of having suspicions about an attempt to piracy his account. He would then have asked him to entrust his password, unblocking access to his virtual purse of 10 million won (1,300 euros).

A piracy, whose timing coincides with the recent announcement of a bill for the legalization of the bitcoin by Park Yong-jin, the ruling Democratic Party of Korea.

The Bitcoin in brief

Creation The bitcoin originates from software designed in 2009 by one or more computer scientists hidden under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

Manufacturing The bitcoins - the "mining" - are controlled by a computer program that generates them automatically and in decreasing numbers, until their number, now 16 million, reaches 21 million.

Usage The e-currency can be exchanged for services, goods or other currencies through a no-cost transaction system. For its detractors, it is the instrument of illegal traffic because of the anonymity of payments.