Court finds Bithumb ‘partially liable’ for 2017 hack

A judge in the Seoul Central District Court today announced a ruling regarding a lawsuit filed by three users of Bithumb Korea who claimed $126,000 and $38,000 for damages citing data leaks during a 2017 Bithumb hack. The ruling is said to hold Bithumb partially liable for the damages claimed by the users. 

Local news source Fn News said that the users Hong, Seo and Jang claimed to have fallen victim to a phishing scam during which they disclosed their verification number to the hacker which lead to the hacker changing their XRP and ETH amounts to Korean Won – then buying bitcoin again with the amount – and eventually withdrawing all of it. The report said that the judge only allowed Jang to partially have 50% of his claim. 

The judge dismissed the allegations of Hong and Seo as he did not find enough evidence to rule in their favour. According to the report the judge said that the their  data had been leaked through other websites and that Bithumb was not responsible for the damages Hong and Seo had claimed. 

However, in all three cases, the court said that the Bithumb was guilty of negligence and improper management that caused the massive data breach incident.

The Korean police had recently raided Bitthumb headquarters, which operates one of Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, because of an alleged $25 million token sale hosted on Bithumb and a proposed acquisition by a Singapore platform, BTHMB. Moreover some investors stated that they lost millions during the sale