As earlier reported 3.5 million worth BTC was stolen from Indian based Coinsecure exchange and company has planned for a repayment and 10% of bounty for those help in recovering lost bitcoins. As per claims from company outlet, this seems to be an inside job by their Cheif Security Officer in siphoning money off the firm.
The company says that 438.31859715 BTC worth approximately Rs 20 crore or US$3,067,220 was allegedly stolen on April 8, from an offline wallet. The exchange has a customer base of around 2 million and amongst which 11,000 users were affected, which is known as biggest cryptocurrency theft in India.
As per statements published by the company,
We are also seeking help from the Bitcoin community and all our users who can help us identify the hacker or give us any information that could lead us to recover funds…We are happy to issue a bounty of 10% to the community for help rendered for [the] recovery of BTC.
How did it happen?
The event occurred when Chief Security Officer, Amitabh Saxena was reportedly extracting the bitcoins from offline wallet to distribute to customers. The funds were lost during the process of extraction the private keys.
Although the access to the offline wallet with private keys was only with CSO and CEO, the company still claims that CSO has made up the story of losing them during the extraction process. An FIR(First Information Report) is also filed against him and the passport of alleged is confiscated.
“The hack that happened is also too good to be true. Almost like offering the password to your bank account in a platter to a hacker. The time he exported the private key, it was after 5 minutes the hack started.”
– The Economic Times
Where are those Coins now?
According to Coinsecure the address where stolen bitcoins were transferred to is 1BaEJquitskdXcTj53Uy6PuUtJ5a8ETWpA and almost 973 transactions have happened so far with final balance to be 139.42094629 BTC.
Tracking the stolen funds became more difficult when the company found that data log was cleared by hackers leaving no trail behind.
Repayment Plan
As on Saturday, statements published on company outlet says that all the funds held by customers will be recovered and refunded to back to them. But with warning note that,
If recovery of siphoned BTC is not possible, then we will apply the lock in rates as of the 9th of April, 2018. 10% of the coin holding balance will be refunded in BTC and 90% will be returned in INR
The company further added, that all the details regarding refund plan will be issued in sometime next week. Until then please let us know your thoughts on the Coinsecure’s bounty and refund announcements.