Brazilian crypto trading platform hacked, over 264,000 user data leaked

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The private information of over 264,000 users of Brazilian cryptocurrency trading platform Atlas Quantum has been exposed in a hack, according to local media reports.

Portal do Bitcoin reported that the hack was initially brought to light through a YouTube video posted by Investimentos Digitais. A total of 14,500 accounts containing a total of 5,813 BTC, currently worth about $40 million, were reportedly affected by the security breach. Among the owners of the digital currency is Atlas Quantum itself, which reportedly has 792 BTC ($5.5 million) in its account.

Atlas Quantum issued a statement on Facebook originally in Portuguese, which roughly translated, read, “We believe that an unauthorized party has misrepresented information about our customers’ names, e-mails, phones, and balances. All other data, such as passwords, is encrypted and secure. There was no access or compromise of the funds in our custody.”

The statement also mentioned a temporary disabling of certain functions in the website, including withdrawal of funds, “as a precaution to ensure the safety of our customers against possible fraud attempts.” No definite time for the restoration of the website was given, only that it was to be done “as soon as possible.”

In a May 2 Medium article, ‘Three reasons to invest with Atlas Quantum,’ the company claimed to employ over 100 people and manage over $27 million in assets. The same article also stresses their “top-notch” security in handling the assets in their safekeeping, involving two-factor authentication as a means of verifying transactions.

CCN quoted a source who revealed that the company is known to be controversial, using an ‘arbitrage bot’ for gains of 3% a month. This is reminiscent of the ‘trading bot’ reportedly used by the company BitConnect, whose cryptocurrency of the same name fell from a peak of $430 to under a dollar today, after allegations by regulators in Texas and North Carolina that the crypto lending platform was a Ponzi scheme. Bitconnect had promised 1% compounding daily interest to users, making for 40% returns a month.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.