South Korean prosecutors found that approximately 47 million dollars of Bitcoin (BTC) they had seized and stored as part of a criminal investigation are no longer accessible. Authorities suspect that a phishing attack may have compromised the digital assets after an agency employee visited a fraudulent website.
What happened: seized cryptocurrencies disappear
The Gwangju District Prosecutor's Office discovered the loss during a routine internal check of seized financial assets, which includes verifying passwords and access credentials stored on removable media such as USB drives.
A prosecutor stated to local media that the BTC may have been compromised after someone accidentally accessed a fake site during the inspection.
The Chosun Daily reported that approximately 70 billion wons in Bitcoin were missing.
The report indicates that wallet passwords or access credentials may have been exposed externally, allowing attackers to drain the seized assets. Authorities are attempting to trace the location of the assets but have refused to provide specific details.
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Why it matters: the phishing threat persists
Phishing remains one of the most common methods to steal cryptocurrencies. It relies on spoofed websites or messages designed to trick victims into entering sensitive information such as private keys or login credentials.
Earlier this year, Ledger users, the French hardware wallet company, were targeted by a phishing scam following a data leak at its e-commerce partner.
Scammers sent personalized emails announcing a fake merger between Ledger and Trezor, asking users to enter their 24-word recovery phrases on a spoofed site.
In December 2024, Trust Wallet confirmed that approximately $7 million in cryptocurrency was stolen via a compromised update of its browser extension. The breach only affected version 2.68 of the Chrome extension, released on December 24.
Mobile wallet users were not affected, according to the company. Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, which owns Trust Wallet, stated that the wallet would compensate all affected users.
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