Report said that Japanese authorities are reportedly targeting individuals for their alleged involvement in the January 2018 hack of the Coincheck crypto exchange.
It has been reported by Japanese news outlet Nikkei Asia that police have arrested or referred around 30 people in Japan to the local prosecutors’ office for their alleged role in hacking one of the country’s cryptocurrency exchanges.
However, in January 2018, hackers stole around $534 million worth of NEM (XEM) from Coincheck in what was, and still is the largest hack of a crypto exchange.
Russia’s biggest bank @sberbank expects to launch its #stablecoin in about a month, according to a senior executive https://t.co/cVxhJBeGQZ — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) January 21, 2021
The report said that Nikkei Asia claims that according to an unnamed source, investigators “traced the accounts at conventional cryptocurrency exchanges through which the hacked NEM was converted” to identify the 30 people.
According to the report, since the attacks occurred three years ago, investigators have alleged that Russian hackers may have been partially responsible for infecting the personal computers of Coincheck employees with a virus. The virus could have enabled hackers to take over the infected computers and operate them remotely.
Thus, until now, Japanese authorities had made few arrests in connection with the Coincheck hack.
Source: Cointelegraph