Photo Credit To Hodler XL Via Flickr
The UK arm of the major crypto exchange Coinbase settles $1.14 million Bitcoin theft case caused via an email phishing attack. The case was roughly raging for about two months, which was however out of the public eyes but the latest report unveiled that the victim had lost his 100 Bitcoins (BTC) wherein, hacker sent 80 bitcoins to his Coinbase wallet.
Although Bitcoin’s value seems en-routing the lower graph in recent times, it has not lowered the number of bitcoin hacks and attacks. Despite bitcoin has failed to live up to expectations of experts and analysts over recent years, few still believe, it is becoming the store of value. In fact, Twitter CEO recently admired Bitcoin and said it has the possibility of becoming the native currency of the Internet.
Well, how far and how well Bitcoin flourish in near future is still a matter of time but the hackers are not letting any stone un-turned to leverage the benefit from bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies.
As for Coinbase UK, the exchange has recently closed this bitcoin theft case with the CEO of Alphabit Fund, Liam Robertson who lost 80 Bitcoins worth around $1.4 million. It remains unclear the amount paid by Coinbase UK to dismiss
the case but the victim caught with the dubious experience in early July.
Overview of the Scenario
Per the reports, Robertson is the corporate trader in Europe, he does involve in the heavy transfer of crypto assets regularly. As such, in early July, he was reportedly discussing with an executive on a call wherein both also talked about bitcoin, wallet and the email addresses. As per their discussion, Roberston had agreed to send 100 Bitcoins in an algorithmic trading fund – with this information – scammers then employ simple email phishing attack. The attack resulted in Roberston to send Bitcoins to attacker’s wallet address than to executive’s wallet address he was talking to.
It was later found that the attackers sent 80 Bitcoins to his Coinbase wallet, 15 to Local Bitcoin P2P exchange and another five to an offline wallet. Now as the transfer of 80 bitcoins was made to Coinbase wallet, Roberston sues Coinbase to disclose the identity of the hackers and send him his BTC back.
During that time, Bitcoin was worth $11000 dollar which resulted in victim to lose over one million dollars in the alleged scam.
The victim is now compensated for his loss from Coinbase UK but there’s still no further details from Coinbase on its action towards the wallet address held by the attacker.
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