Exchange Leak Puts $620K-Worth of Customer Crypto at Risk

A South Korea-based exchange has inadvertently leaked sensitive information about 19 of its users, potentially putting some $620,000 worth of cryptocurrency at risk.

According to a report from CoinDesk Korea , an employee of Bitkoex, an exchange launched in May, posted information on how much of the Karma (KRM) cryptocurrency was held by 19 users on the platform in a social media chat last Friday

The report said the leaked message contained the email addresses associated with the users as well as the wallet addresses and private keys to the KRM token in their accounts, which could allow anyone with the information to access the assets.

The total amount of the token owned by the users worth 750 million won, or around $620,000, the report said.

Following the event, Bitkoex said the employee posted the message by accident and the exchange has moved the exposed assets to a cold wallet, which is not accessible through the internet. As such, the company asserted no assets have been lost.

Yet, this is not the first time that user information had been leaked from a Korean crypto exchange.

As previously reported by CoinDesk, the computer of an employee from Bithumb, one of the largest crypto exchanges in South Korea by trading volume, was hacked earlier last year. Information of as many as 30,000 users on the platform was subsequently leaked.

In fact, yesterday's report said the country's Ministry of Science and ICT inspected the information security level of 21 crypto exchanges in South Korea from January to March and confirmed that most companies have security vulnerabilities.

Just last week, Bithumb said that around $31 million in cryptocurrency was stolen by hackers from the platform.

Key image via Shutterstock