Remember CoinBene, the cryptocurrency exchange platform that denied being hacked at the end of March 2019, and instead saying it was undergoing maintenance? Well, it turns out the platform is still under maintenance, or so the company says. Meanwhile, Cointelegraph has received exclusive details from stakeholders reportedly affected by the situation. These reports, for the most part, were only discussed on social media platforms like Twitter and Telegram but have yet to make an appearance on the cryptocurrency news circuit — until now. The CoinBene saga — timeline of events On Monday (March 25, 2019), there were massive outgoing transactions …

A “blockchain bandit” has managed to amass almost 45,000 ether (ETH) by successfully guessing weak private keys, according to a report released by Independent Security Evaluators on April 23. Adrian Bednarek, a senior security analyst, said he discovered the sophisticated hacker by accident. While guessing a private key is meant to be a statistical improbability, he managed to uncover 732 private keys through his research — giving him the ability to complete transactions as if he was the account holder. The report notes that rather than using a brute force search for random private keys, it used a combination of …

A 21-year-old man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after becoming one of the first people in the United States to be convicted of stealing cryptocurrency by hacking into cell phones. Prosecutors in Santa Clara announced the jail sentence on April 22. In February, Joel Ortiz had pleaded guilty and to theft and accepted the 10-year plea deal. Ortiz stole more than $7.5 million from at least 40 victims: the press release notes that he then spent $10,000 a time at Los Angeles nightclubs, hired a helicopter to fly him and his friends to a music festival, and …

An indictment has been filed against Afek Zard in Israel over the alleged theft of 74.990.74 Dash (over $9 million) from his roommate, local media News1 reports on April 18. According to CoinMarketCap data, the amount of coins stolen is equivalent to over 0.85% of the total circulating supply of Dash. News1 states that the reported victim, Alexei Yaromenko, was reportedly an early cryptocurrency investor who has accumulated crypto assets since 2013. Yarmolenko reportedly taught Zard about cryptocurrencies and trading them himself before the theft allegedly took place. Per the indictment document filed by attorney Giora Hazan, Zard was in …

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif announced that the transfer of the business from Tech Bureau to Fisco Digital Asset Group (FDAG) will become effective on April 22, and that normal activity will resume on the next day. Cointelegraph Japan reported on the developments on April 20. Bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), and monacoin (MONA) were stolen from the exchange in a hack in September last year, resulting in total losses of cryptocurrencies worth 6.7 billion yen (around $59.8 million). With the acquisition, which is a part of the user compensation plan, FDAG provided financial support of 5 billion yen (over $44.6 …

In late March, major South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb lost around $18 million as a result of a hack. While the details are still sketchy — for instance, it is unclear whether or not it was an inside job, as Bithumb initially claimed — a large portion of the stolen funds have been frozen by various exchanges who received them from hackers attempting to sell the loot. However, despite Bithumb stressing that the hijacked assets belonged to the company and not to its clients, the customers still can’t access their funds, since withdrawals and deposits have been disabled as part …

Digital payments giant PayPal has won a cybersecurity patent to protect users from crypto ransomware, according to a document from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published on April 16. The system described in the patent, entitled “Techniques for ransomware detection and mitigation,” intends to improve the detection of ransomware and prevent it from locking up users’ access to their files. PayPal’s patent describes ransomware as a malware that may encrypt original data and delete the non-encrypted original version, with the malicious party usually demanding users to pay them in anonymous cryptocurrency in order to decrypt the files. …

KT Corporation, South Korea’s largest telecom firm, has launched its blockchain-powered fifth-generation (5G) network brand, local news agency The Korea Times reports on April 16. Called “GiGA Chain,” the brand intends to boost the security of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and to protect them from cyberattacks, the report says. As a part of the new brand, KT developed GiGA Stealth technology that prevents hacking attacks by hiding the IP addresses of the connected devices. According to the report, the blockchain-enabled tech makes IP addresses virtually invisible to hackers. Lee Dong-myeon, president of the future platform business group at KT, said that …

South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb has conducted a professional external audit of its funds after a major hack last month, the company confirmed in a statement on April 11. Bithumb, South Korea’s largest exchange, lost around 14 billion won ($13 million) two weeks ago in an event executives believe was masterminded by an insider. Now, Bithumb has used a third party to assess its reserves, repeating its previous assurances that customer funds remained safe in cold storage wallets. The 14 billion of hacked EOS (EOS) tokens, a previous statement said, represented company-only funds. All remaining funds in its hot wallet …

Bitcoin (BTC) wallet service Electrum is facing an ongoing Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack on its servers, the company reported on Twitter on April 7. According to tech news website The Next Web, the new attack has caused users to lose estimatedly millions of dollars to date, with a single person alone reportedly losing about $140,000. The ongoing DoS attack was allegedly launched by a malicious botnet of more than 140,000 machines, and aims to steal users’ Bitcoin by referring them to fake versions of Electrum software. Citing an unnamed security researcher, the article says that the recent DoS attack is deployed …

The World Economic Forum (WEF) released a report about blockchain cybersecurity on April 5. The report points out that most data breaches do not result from the level of skill of the hackers, but instead happen because appropriate security measures often are not implemented. The WEF further claims that while attackers do compromise blockchains themselves, they much more often try to exploit or compromise their deployment. The WEF references the data breach of retail giant Target, which lead to both the CEO and chief information officer being fired, also mentioning that the director of the United States Government Office of …

Nobuaki Kobayashi, trustee of the notorious Japanese Bitcoin (BTC) exchange Mt. Gox, has announced Wednesday, April 3, that all creditors who had filed rehabilitation claims have received decisions. In late March, Kobayashi had announced that the processing of filings had come to an end. According to the newly published paper dubbed “Questions & Answers regarding Approval or Disapproval,” the decisions have already been sent to users’ emails. The document provides detailed instructions for the applicants who had previously filed rehabilitation claims. In case one disagrees with the decision, an application for the assessment of the claim can be filed with …