Hacked crypto exchange DMM seals deal with SBI, accounts to open March

Japanese crypto-focused finance firm SBI VC Trade has finalized a deal to receive the assets of the hacked crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin, with the exchange’s customers to have accounts ready in March.

SBI said in a Dec. 25 notice that it had agreed to accept all DMM customer accounts and assets, which will be transferred to the firm on March 8, 2025.

The firm said DMM customers won’t need to open an account with SBI as it will automatically create accounts for transitioning DMM users.

DMM Bitcoin said earlier this month that it would liquidate and transfer its customers over to SBI as it couldn’t recover from a breach of its crypto wallets in May, where attackers made off with $320 million.

SBI’s X post translated to English from Japanese. Source: SBI VC Trade

On May 30, DMM said its servers were breached, and the keys to wallets containing 4,500 Bitcoin (BTC) were stolen, with the attackers quickly moving the stash. The company said it would replace the stolen funds to make customers whole.

On Dec. 23, the FBI, the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3) and Japan’s National Police Agency pinned the exploit on the North Korea-linked crime group TraderTraitor and shared details of a multi-stage heist by the group.

The FBI said a North Korean threat actor masqueraded as a recruiter on LinkedIn and contacted an employee at Japanese crypto wallet firm Ginco who maintained the software for the company’s wallet management system.

The threat actor sent the employee a malicious script pretending that it was a pre-employment test, which the employee copied to their GitHub page, which was then exploited, the agency said.

Related: Crypto thieves score big on centralized services, private keys in 2024

Months later, in May, TraderTraitor impersonated the Ginco employee and gained access to the company’s communications. The group then likely used this access to manipulate a transaction request from DMM to nab the Bitcoin haul.

Losses through attacks on centralized crypto services have over doubled to $694 million in 2024 compared to 2023, according to Hacken.

The blockchain security firm noted the hack on DMM, along with the $235 million hack on the India-based crypto exchange WazirX, as this year’s two prominent examples.

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