Police in Japan has taken an eighteen years old hacker into custody over the allegations of stealing ¥15 million ($134,300) in cryptocurrency. As per Japanese media, the accused hacker could take a huge amount by hacking a cryptocurrency related website. It should be noted that this is the first case in Japan which involves the theft of cryptocurrency.
According to the incident report, the suspect is a resident of Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture. But his name is yet to be disclosed as he is still a minor under Japanese law. As per Police officials, the theft has been done between August 14th and September 1st, 2018, and it involves $100000 in cryptocurrency. The suspect had used a website called Monappy. Monappy is widely used by the traders to manage the Monacoin cryptocurrency.
As per the Japanese authorities, the hacker allegedly used the Tor peer-to-peer (P2P) encryption software to hide his personal details like name of the ISP and IP address. In spite of his efforts, security researchers working for the local police department could track him down. They managed to trace him after analyzing communication logs left by the hacker on Monappy’s server.
As per the local authorities, the accused has already admitted to having done the crime. The 18 years old suspect said, “I felt like I’d found a trick no one knew and did it as if I were playing a video game.”
The modus operandi of the whole theft is not yet clear. Police said that the accused could exploit a vulnerability in the website’s codebase which involves sending funds to users. The hacker has allegedly found a loophole in the security of the site. The website transactions system breaks down if someone attempts to repeatedly transfer cryptocurrency during a short timeframe.
As per the 18 years old suspect, he continuously sent cryptocurrency transfer requests to his own account. After doing this repeatedly, the system starts malfunctioning. This allowed him to transfer a large amount of cryptocurrency to his address. As per the company, around 77000 crypto users have been affected by the security breach. Monappy’s management admitted that their site was hacked and promised of reimbursement to the victims
As far as other details are concerned regarding the theft, the hacker had transferred the stolen Monacoin (MONA) cryptocurrency to an account he had opened at a different crypto website. Just after transferring the Monacoins to the other crypto website, he converted the crypto to some other digital asset and bought a new phone.