The breach was discovered on Friday, January 26, with hackers breaking in at 02:57 a.m., the company said in a statement. However, the breach was not discovered until 11:25 p.m., nearly eight and a half hours later, when the company froze deposits and withdrawals for all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin as it assessed its losses in NEM, a lesser-known currency, according to BBC.
Some 260,000 customers are said to be affected by the reported theft. Nevertheless, the exchange has promised to return nearly 90% of the 58 bn yen worth of NEM coins lost in the attack. Also, the company says it has the digital address of where the assets were sent and reported the incident to the police and to Japan’s Financial Services Agency.
As a result of the attack, NEM, the 10th-largest crypto-currency by market value, fell 11% over a 24-hour period to 87 cents, Bloomberg news agency reported. Among the other cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin dropped 3.4% and Ripple retreated 9.9% on January 26, according to BBC.
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