Cyber security Attack

The recent cyber security attack occurred on 29^th January, 2018 when a Tokyo based cryptocurrency company, Coincheck suffered the biggest hack in history, resulting to the theft of approximately $500 million is cryptocurrency (Trend Micro Inc n.p). The manner in which the hacking took place is astonishing, to such an extent that the management of this company have not yet managed to explain how their systems were breached, though they claim that it was not an inside job. Precisely, this company has a security lapse, and this is the major aspect which enabled the hacker to steal such a huge amount of money. The company used to keep the assets of its customers in what they referred as hot wallets, which is linked to external networks. When exchange of currencies is taking place, the company tries to keep most of the customer deposits in cold wallets, which are not linked to external wallets and this means that they are not vulnerable to hacks. The company also does not have multiple signature security, which is a condition that calls for multiple sign offs before financial transactions can be made. The most interesting thing is that the Coincheck company can to identify the address where the stolen coins were diverted to by the hackers but no one knew the person who owns those accounts. According to the chief operating officer of this company, the 523 million new economy management (NEM) coins were sent from a NEM address at around 3.a.m. after eight hours later, the officer noticed an abnormal balance decrease of the overall balance, and it is at this point that he raised the alarm (Trend Micro Inc n.p).

This form of hacking entails phishing, which involves hackers using email as the main avenue of entering into a company`s network system. In the present times, Phishing is getting better and improved especially due to the technological development, as well as the increase of various gadgets which can receive and send emails (Chen et al. 667). Moreover, phishing can take numerous forms, including sending fake emails to well established email addresses or a receiving a fake call from information technology support individuals purporting to fix a certain computer issue. In the Coincheck case, the hacker hacked most of the main emails and managed to access the company`s network system and managed to withdraw funds from almost 260,000 users (Hong 79). They then sent fake emails with misleading pre ICO (initial coin offering) of coins to clients who signed up for notifications.

It is unfortunate that till today, no any hacker who have come to the limelight to claim that he or she is responsible for the entire hacking process of the Coincheck company. However, the management of Coincheck Company have contacted the services of the Financial Services Agency in Japan to conduct thorough investigation concerning the hacking, the stolen coins, and most importantly, enhancing the network security for the company. As per now, the company has identified and published nearly 11 accounts where the stolen money was directed to. In addition, the management of the company is working around the c lock to identify the owners of the 11 accounts (Trend Micro Inc n.p).

The major role that is critical to the response team is quick response, especially due to the fact that this can help in preventing further transactions from being carried out by the hackers. For example, for the case of the Coincheck hacking case, the heist affected 260,000 users, and this figure could have been more were it not for the early intervention of the response team.

Works Cited

Chen, Xi, et al. “Assessing the severity of phishing attacks: A hybrid data mining approach.” Decision Support Systems 50.4 (2011): 662-672.

Hong, Jason. “The state of phishing attacks.” Communications of the ACM 55.1 (2012): 74-81.

Trend Micro Inc. Coincheck Suffers Biggest Hack in Cryptocurrency History; Experty Users Tricked into Buying False ICO. Posted on 29^th January, 2018. Accessed from, https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cybercrime-and-digital-threats/coincheck-suffers-biggest-hack-in-cryptocurrency-experty-users-buy-false-ico