In yet another incident of massive crypto theft, BITPoint has reportedly been robbed of around $32 million worth of cryptocurrency. The investigators who are investigating this fraud have found that hackers got access to the BITPoint system for around 12 hours and in that period, this whole cryptocurrency fraud was executed. The parent company of the BITPoint announced on Friday that hackers stole cryptocurrency worth $32 million from its account in the intervening night of Thursday and Friday. Scammers hacked the system in the Thursday evening and till the Friday morning, the access to the system remains with hackers, providing them more than enough time to execute this scam. Among the cryptocurrencies stolen, Ripple and Bitcoin are the prominent names although, in total, five different types of cryptocurrencies were stolen by fraudsters.
In-depth Details
According to the Yoshinori Hashimoto, an expert in the field of online security, the theft involved a transfer of the cryptocurrencies worth $9 million on the Thursday at 9:00 pm. Just so you know, Hashimoto focused only on the transfer of Bitcoin by hackers. Over the period of the next 12 hours, more digital assets were transferred to accounts of hackers and according to the estimate; Bitcoin worth $25 million was lost by BITPoint in this theft.
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An important observation from the Hashimoto points towards laxity on the part of BITPoint. According to the Hashimoto, half of this loss could be averted BITPoint taken a proactive approach and stopped all the transactions once it detected the abnormality in the transactions. The company identified that the transactions were abnormally large in terms of volume of cryptocurrencies involved and at that point, the company should have stopped all these transactions. Another important point for cryptocurrency exchanges is to keep in mind that the online system is very much prone to hacking and despite all the safety measures, exchanges, as well as the users, must be very careful all the time during transaction time. There is a need to have a proactive safety mechanism which should detect a transaction involving a large volume of crypto and automatically snap such transactions if some abnormality is detected.
Implications
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The implications of these kinds of incidents are far-fetched. Thinking that its effect will remain confined only to users of BITOint is not right as the overall repercussions will go beyond and have a negative impact on the whole crypto industry. Not only investors will lose their confidence, but also the general public will continue to remain skeptical about whether they should adopt the digital coins or not. Therefore, it is the larger responsibility of all the stakeholders in the crypto universe to work towards a safe and secure cryptocurrency trading experience. Both a high degree of safety measures and advanced level of proactive behavior are required to stop the crypto frauds and theft incidents. Policymakers too need to contribute to making the whole cryptocurrency experience safer by putting out stringent rules and regulations regarding the operating procedure related to cryptocurrency exchanges. Before permitting to exchange is to carry out the business, they must be tested for a high degree of deterrence against forgery and fraud cases.
