South Korea judge orders partial payment for 2017 Bithumb hack victim

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A South Korean judge has ordered Bithumb to pay a portion of the claims filed by one of the victims of its 2017 hack. The judge ruled that the exchange was partially responsible for the data breach.

In its ruling, the Seoul Central District Court ruled that the digital currency exchange and the claimant, only known as Jang, were both partly responsible for the data breach. On its part, Bithumb could have directed more resources towards its security systems to prevent the hack.

Following the data breach, the hackers reportedly called Jang, impersonating a Bithumb customer center agent, local news outlet Fn News reports. They provided Jang with information that only a Bithumb employee would have access to, such as name, phone number, the digital currencies owned and the wallet balances.

The hackers allegedly informed Jang that there was an attempt to log in to his account from overseas. He was asked to provide a verification number sent to his number, which the hackers used to take control of his digital currency account.

The court ruled that Jang was partly responsible as well as he provided details to the hackers which were not available from the stolen data, such as the verification code.

Bithumb must pay Jang $5,050, the court ruled, a much lower value from his initial $27,000 claim.

The court however ruled against two other plaintiffs, Hong and Seo who had made $126,000 and $38,000 claims respectively. For Hong, the court believed that his details could have been stolen from any other site as only the email and phone number were obtained.

The ruling comes just days after police reportedly raided Bithumb’s offices in Korea’s Gangnam District. As CoinGeek reported, the raid was in connection to an investigation on Lee Jung Hoon, the chairman of the board at Bithumb Korea for allegedly transferring assets overseas without proper authorization. The exchange was also purportedly being sued by holders of BXA token which had lost 99% of its value after an acquisition and listing fell through.