Market Declines as Korean Crypto Exchange Coinrail Faces Hack

The south Korean crypto exchange ‘Coinrail’ has reportedly been hit by hackers losing about 2.6 billion Pundi X (NPXS) and some other altcoins.

The hacking incident occurred on Sunday, and the exchange confirmed the intrusion on a twitter post.

해킹공격시도로 인한 시스템 점검중입니다. 일부코인(펀디엑스,NPXS)이 확인되었으며 추가적인 코인피해가 있는지 여부를 확인중입니다. 추후 자세한 사항은 재공지하겠습니다 / There has been an cyber intrusion in our system. We’re confirming it and some coins(Pundi X, NPXS) are confirmed.

— coinrail (@Coinrail_Korea) June 10, 2018

In a statement on its website, Coinrail has announced that it is currently reviewing its security systems due to the hacking attempts and was able to freeze the all  Pundi X (NPXS), NPER (NPER), and Artex Coin (ATX).

The company said it has successfully secured 70% of the total coin/token and are in cold wallets.

“At present, 70% of your coin rail total coin / token reserves have been confirmed to be safely stored and moved to a cold wallet and are in storage.

Two-thirds of the coins confirmed to have been leaked are covered by freezing / recalling through consultation with each coach and related exchanges. The remaining one-third of coins are being investigated with investigators, relevant exchanges,  and coin developers,” the statement reads.

Users are currently unable to access their accounts and other information on the website due to the ongoing investigation. The statement from the company is the only accessible information on the site.

Dear Pundians, to help Coinrail to investigate an incident, we have halted all the NPXS transactions till 18:00:00 SGT (GMT+8) on June 10, 2018. https://t.co/gZB5S4Sjmh

— Pundi X Official Account (Pls do not send ETH) (@PundiXLabs) June 10, 2018

The hack triggered a sell-off in the crypto markets as Bitcoin quickly slipped from $7620 to $7207.19, a 5.6% drop within two hours and Ethereum dropping down by 5% within that time. At the time of writing, the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is  $317 billion down from $470 billion

Coinrail Exchange – Not among the giants

It is quite strange to see that the hack of the eight-month Coinrail could affect the crypto market. According to coinmarketcap, the exchange is currently at 94th position with a 24 hours trading volume of $2,656,683 at the time of writing.

Indeed, the continuous growth in the cryptocurrency industry continues to breed more hackers and cybercriminals. Crypto exchanges, wallet providers, and investors have to take extra care in securing their digital asset.