TL;DR Breakdown:
- BuyUcoin has been reportedly breached, with over 300,000 users’ information exposed.
- ShinyHunters is suspected to be responsible for the attack.
BuyUcoin, a popular cryptocurrency exchange in India, has been reportedly hacked. The hackers have already exposed several contact information belonging to the customers on the dark web. The incident today is coming a few days after the Russian exchange, Livecoin, closed shop amid a breach last month. These are unimpressive developments to begin the new year and could scare people away from cryptocurrencies.
BuyUcoin customers’ data exposed
As Business Insider reported on Thursday, BuyUcoin was hacked, leading to the exposure of over 300,000 (3.25 lakh) sensitive information of the users on the dark web. The information included customers’ phone numbers, names, encrypted passwords, names, KYC data, bank details, and other identifying information, according to Rajshekhar Rajaharia, a cyber-security researcher. The data was suspected to be stolen from a 6GB file, which contained three backup files for BuyUcoin.
The stolen data from BuyUcoin was leaked on the dark web alongside the customer data of other companies like Wappalyzer, Wongnai Media Co, and others. Cyber-security researchers at Kela Research suspect ShinyHunters as the mastermind of the attack. “Over this past summer, ShinyHunters was seen publishing leaked data for free, exposing millions of personal records from all over the world”, the researchers said.
ShinyHunters is an infamous hacker group known for stealing sensitive information from prominent companies for Bitcoin. Recently, they attacked Pixlr, BigBasket, including JusPay, a payment gateway company based in Bengaluru, India. Following the report, it seems only BuyUcoin user data was affected in the attack, as no cryptocurrency was reported to be lost.
Hackers are stealing information for Bitcoin
Last year, Cryptopolitan reported a lot of companies whose customer data were stolen by hackers for a certain amount in Bitcoin. A ransomware gang went as far as running Facebook adverts to pressure Campari, a popular Italian alcoholic liqueur, to pay about $15 million in Bitcoin to recover their stolen customer data. On December 10, hackers also requested a Bitcoin payment to return about 85,000 SQL databases they stole.
