Cybersecurity Experts Gain Inroads Into Zaif Exchange Hacking Incident

Japanese cybersecurity specialists have formally declared that they have found possibly implicating proof against the hackers of the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif. The crypto specialists work for Japan Digital Design Co. (JDD), a subsidiary of the banking and financial institution Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG).

As previously reported, hackers managed to steal cryptoactives of both users and the stock exchange itself worth 6.7 billion yen (about 59 million dollars at printing time) in the wake of a security breach on the Zaif stock exchange in mid-September. In detail, the compromised reserves comprised of 5,966 Bitcoins (BTC) in addition to Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and MonaCoin (MONA).

Today’s explanation describes that since the stolen Monaco started to be moved from Zaif on October 20, JDD has succeeded in recognizing the source of five of the doubtful transactions and has given the cyber specialists with data on the originator’s characteristics.

To track the stolen currency, JDD conducted a hackathon at the end of September together with the local TokyoWestern cybersecurity team and security company EL Plus, using the infrastructure of several cloud services.

Zaif’s announcement states
“In the investigation of the stolen virtual currency, the remittance route was analyzed through a static analysis of the blockchain […] by deploying the virtual currency node at a large scale […] we verified whether we can obtain clues such as source IP address etc.”

The Zaif operator, Tech Bureau, received its third order for business improvement from the Japan Financial Services Agency (FSA) at the end of September. The FSA indicated that it considered that the investigation carried out by Tech Bureau into the causes of the recent hack–and its response to customers–was insufficient.

The financial regulator too stipulated that in case the administrator fizzled to comply with the order, the agency could utilize more extreme means, such as a trade suspension order and/or an exchange enrollment cancellation.