In what is perhaps one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in India, almost 438 bitcoins worth Rs. 20 crores were stolen from one of the leading cryptocurrency exchange firms. The wallets of this firm were hacked, leading to a scandal the size of which wasn’t seen before.
Coinsecure, the Delhi based cryptocurrency exchange, filed an FIR with the cyber cell accusing its Central Statistic Officer (CSO,) Amitabh Saxena, of syphoning off money from the firm’s wallet. The exchange firm urged the government to seize Saxena’s passport, fearing he may leave the country. A case has been registered against Saxena, under IPC sections and Section 66 of the IT Act.
The incident was discovered on Monday when the company was going through its wallets. A senior security officer discovered that all the bitcoins stored online had disappeared. It was later found that the private keys where the password that is kept by the company and is stored offline, were leaked, leading to the hack.
Despite the company’s efforts to trace the hackers, the keys remained missing. All the data logs stored in the wallets were erased, with no trace of the stolen keys anywhere. Furthermore, as a result of the hacking, the company couldn’t find out to which account the bitcoins were transferred.
According to Mohit Karla, the founder and CEO of Coinsecure, the hacking seems to have been an inside job. The private keys, which contained the password, aren’t necessarily stored online. However, the Cyber Police discovered that the private keys were stored online for more than 12 hours, giving the hackers easy access to the cryptocurrencies.
The police have seized the company’s systems in order to make certain the extent of the breach. The officers are also going through the database to see how many wallets have been compromised during the hacking. The senior security officials of the company have also been called in for questioning.