Japan Going To Trial After Crypto Hacking Losses

An 18-year-old in Japan has been recently sent to prosecutors as the country sets its eye on the first ever trial involving digital currency cyber-theft. Here is everything about it in a nutshell.

Hacking Monappy’s Wallet

According to the official report, the minor whose name remains unknown hails from the city of Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, has reportedly stolen around 15 million yen ($134,340) in the crypto manacoin. It is worth noting that in the country, an individual is considered minor until he/she reaches the age of 20.

The Japanese youth is believed to have hacked Monappy, which is a digital currency wallet. In a repeated succession, the exploit was performed from August 14 to September 1 last year. The minor did it by way of leveraging a glitch on the company’s very own website. As such, he was able to send a variety of transfer request directly to himself. Apparently, the process ended up in a whopping loss that affected roughly 77,000 users of the firm’s service.

After his successful attempt, he tried to transfer the stolen digital currencies to a certain account. But this time around, it came with a completely different crypto platform. The latter, in particular, was where he was successful in exchanging the monacoin for another digital currency. The report added that the stolen funds were spent on a deluge of times, with the smartphone being one of them.

The Youth’s Confession

According to the Japanese police department, the youth did not hesitate in confessing to his crimes. He said that the act felt like he was the only person who knew it, a trick that only he was able to perform. He even went to say that his hacking could be likened to playing a video game.

Since the youth’s hack, the digital currency wallet Monappy decided to go offline. On its official website, the company states that the service has been suspended following “external attacks,” which basically refer to the 18-year-old’s hacking.

Back in November last year, the company revealed an update on its Medium blog. It stated that it was successful in completing the “direct repair” it applied on the entire defects. Even more so, the firm said that it was performing a “final security check” prior to fully resuming its entire operations.

Japan has been unfortunate over the years in the crypto space, especially since it has lost billions of dollars through crypto thefts.