Bithumb Hack Prompts FSC Emergency Inspection of Virtual Asset Industry

Financial authorities have launched an emergency inspection into hacking incidents spreading across the board, from banks to virtual asset exchanges.

On October 28, the Financial Services Commission held an emergency inspection meeting on hacking incidents in the virtual asset industry with the Financial Supervisory Service, the Financial Security Institute, the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance (DAXA), Bithumb and others.

Bithumb said that a hack of an internal system used to support employees' work had resulted in the exposure of information belonging to employees of Bithumb, its subsidiaries and partner companies. The company is still investigating whether user information was also exposed. So far, it has not confirmed the exposure of information that could be used for payments or other purposes, such as virtual asset wallets.

The FSC, FSS and Financial Security Institute are launching an immediate on-site investigation and working to determine the cause of the incident. They plan to take consumer protection measures, including full compensation, if consumers suffer losses.

The FSC also plans to strengthen security measures in the virtual asset industry to the level required of financial companies, even though the sector is not subject to the Electronic Financial Transactions Act.

An FSC official said, "We will also conduct thorough investigations into incidents at Mirae Asset Life Insurance, Mirae Asset Global Investments and Daishin Securities, which recently received reports of hacking, and do everything possible to protect those affected."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.