According to the Seoul Central District Court, two customers were seeking $126,000 and $38,000 respectively for financial damages related to a 2017 data breach incident at cryptocurrency exchange platform Bithumb . The judge ruled that the allegations were not entirely substantiated.
According to Fn News, plaintiffs Hong and Seo said they lost money due to a phishingthat used private data stolen through Bithumb. The third plaintiff, named Jang, received $5,000 to cover the total loss of his money. This amount reflects a much lower value than his original claim of $27,200.
And in all three cases, the court said that the cryptocurrency exchange platform could have allocated more resources for the security of its customers, in order to prevent such a data breach incident.
The judge, however, found that besides Bithumb, Jang was partially responsible, noting that the victim provided details that were not originally included in the data that had been stolen from the platform.
In order for the attack to be successful, the criminal impersonated a Bithumb customer service agent, providing Jang with information he believed only a Bithumb employee would know.
The hacker then informed Jang that he had detected a suspicious login attempt on his account and needed a verification code sent to his phone number to block it. Once access was granted, the hacker proceeded to convert Jang’s XRP and ETH into fiat.
The court's decision came shortly after the South Korean police raid on Bithumb's offices on September 2.
The investigation was carried out by the cybercrime unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency. It is alleged that it was linked to an ongoing police investigation in which Lee Jung Hoon, chairman of the board of Bithumb Korea and Bithumb Holdings, participated.
