Japanese crypto-focused finance firm SBI VC Trade finalized a deal to receive the assets of the hacked crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin, with the exchange’s customer accounts to be 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 accounts with SBI as it will automatically create them for transitioning DMM users.
DMM Bitcoin said earlier this month that it would liquidate and transfer its customers to SBI because it couldn’t recover from a breach of its crypto wallets in May when attackers made off with $320 million.
SBI’s X post was translated into 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 the multi-stage heist.
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 it was a pre-employment test, which the employee copied to their GitHub page, which was then exploited, the agency said.
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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 from attacks on centralized crypto services more than doubled in 2024 from the previous year, reaching $694 million, according to Hacken.
The blockchain security firm pointed to the hack on DMM and the $235 million hack on the India-based crypto exchange WazirX as this year’s two most prominent examples.
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