18 Year Old Japanese Crypto Hacker Steals 15 Million Yen

A Japanese crypto hacker recently admitted to stealing crypto funds worth 15 million Yen back in 2018. The 18-year old thief has since been handed over to prosecutors.

The cyber-thief allegedly successfully bypassed Monappay’s security system, a crypto wallet used to store Monacoin and stole roughly 15 million Yen which equates to about $136,196 USD.

The Japanese hacker is from Utsunomiya, a city in Japan where he conducted the malicious crime between mid-August and early September 2018.

In order to cover his tracks, the crypto jacker utilised Tor, a dark web browser. Despite the anonymous nature of Tor, law enforcement was able to track the hacker by utilising data left upon Monappay’s servers.

The hacker spammed the wallet service with an influx of transfer request and was able to illegally credit his own account due to the system crashing which enabled him to credit his account with the stolen funds.

According to Japan Today:

“He [the Japanese crypto hacker] then put the stolen Monacoins in an account set up by a different cryptocurrency operator, received dividends in a different cryptocurrency and bought items such as a smartphone handset.”

While speaking to the police, the hacker said that he felt as if he had “found a trick no one knows and did it as if I were playing a video game.”

This marks the first time in Japan where a hacker has been charged despite the fact that in the past billions of crypto funds have been hacked from other crypto exchanges with no suspects being caught. In 2018, over 7,000 cases of suspected money laundering tied to crypto were also reported to Japanese authorities.

This case is a clear indication that many crypto wallet services, exchanges and websites do not feature sufficient levels of security.

On a global scale, crypto exchange hackers make for the most lucrative form of cyber attacks in 2018 alone close to $1 billion in funds have been lost to malicious attacks.

Thankfully, there was no impact on the cold wallet which held 54.2% of Monappy’s total balance and the firm has since announced that it would compensate those whose funds were taken.