Crypto Exchange Coinhako Briefly Halts Withdrawals after Cyberattack

.One of Asia's largest crypto exchanges has abruptly frozen all clients' withdrawals this week due to a cyberattack. Singapore's fiat-cryptocurrency platform Coinhako was targeted on February 21 in what the company described as a "sophisticated attack."

Before it announced the attack, the exchange said some functions were paused while it underwent "unplanned maintenance."

Coinhako CEO Yusho Liu told CoinDesk that, following the outage, the exchange had reset passwords and two-factor authentication for all users, but the ability to withdraw funds would remain restricted as a "key countermeasure against unauthorized transaction outflows."

A Coinhako spokesman also explained on Telegram that they have detected "a sophisticated and coordinated attack" on specific Coinhako accounts, and thus the exchange has "disabled the send function as a preventive measure."

Security has been an issue for Asian exchanges

The attack, however, only impacted 20 Coinhako users and trading operations, user accounts, and their associated funds/account balances were not at risk at any point during the attack, the exchange confirmed. Several days after the attack, the exchange assured affected customers that they will be reimbursed from its own pocket.

On 21st Feb 2020, our system was quick to detect transactional anomalies. This allowed us to react and keep affected parties low.

Affected parties have been fully reimbursed and here is an overview of the incident ?? Join Telegram for more info https://t.co/y2TAdAyLLZ#coinhako pic.twitter.com/xBAAhfgsHb — Coinhako (@coinhako) February 27, 2020

Anxious traders responded to the company tweet in the hopes that the exchange had not been hacked, and no balances were lost. Some clients who reported that their deposits were pending for hours were reassured by the company.

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Security has been an issue for Asian crypto exchanges in particular. In 2018, hackers stole about $500 million worth of a lesser-known cryptocurrency called NEM coins from major Japanese exchange Coincheck. Tokyo-based Mt. Gox was the first high-profile hack. To date, CEO of the now-defunct Bitcoin Bitcoin While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that Read this Term exchange Karpelès has denied any wrongdoing and blamed hackers for the lost bitcoins, pointing to a software security flaw.