Mt. Gox | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A 42-year-old Belarusian and Cypriot national with alleged connections to the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e is facing charges related to money laundering and operating an unlicensed money services business. Aliaksandr Klimenka , who was arrested in Latvia on December 21, 2023, was extradited to the U.S. and is currently being held in custody. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison. BTC-e, which had been operating since 2011, was seized by law enforcement authorities in late July 2017 following the arrest of another key member  Alexander Vinnik , in Greece. The exchange is alleged to have received deposits valued at over $4 billion, with Vinnik laundering funds received from the hack of another digital exchange, Mt. Gox, through various online exchanges, including BTC-e. Court documents  allege  that the exchange was a "significant cybercrime and online money laundering entity," allowing its users to trade in bitcoin with high level...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has charged two Russian nationals in connection with masterminding the 2014 digital heist of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox. According to unsealed indictments released last week, Alexey Bilyuchenko, 43, and Aleksandr Verner, 29, have been accused of conspiring to launder approximately 647,000 bitcoins stolen from September 2011 through at least May 2014 as a result of unauthorized access to a server holding crypto wallets used by Mt. Gox customers. "Starting in 2011, Bilyuchenko and Verner stole a massive amount of cryptocurrency from Mt. Gox, contributing to the exchange's ultimate insolvency," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr.  said  in a statement. "Armed with the ill-gotten gains from Mt. Gox, Bilyuchenko allegedly went on to help set up the notorious  BTC-e virtual currency exchange , which laundered funds for cyber criminals worldwide." Bilyuchenko and Verner are also alleged to hav...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

Greek  police have arrested a Russian man who is believed to have been the operator of the popular BTC-e Bitcoin exchange on charges of laundering more than $4 billion in bitcoin for culprits involved in hacking attacks, tax fraud and drug trafficking. A United States jury indicted 38-year-old Alexander Vinnik on Wednesday after his arrest in Greece on Tuesday at the request of US law enforcement authorities. The suspect is one of the operators of BTC-e, a service operational since 2011. Headquartered in Russia, the digital currency exchange has been offline since the arrest of Vinnik, and its homepage says, "Site is under maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience.." According to a press release published by the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), BTC-e ignored "know your customer" laws in an effort to serve criminals, and even hosted message boards buzzing with illegal activities. The FinCEN also announced a $110 ...

World's largest Bitcoin exchange Mt. G ox  has shut down its website, withdrawal system, deleted its Twitter feed and halted all trading systems after it detected " unusual activity ." The Bitcoin Foundation, a Bitcoin advocacy group, confirmed th at Mark Karpeles , the chief executive of Tokyo-based Mt. Gox  bitcoin exchange has resigned from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation. This comes just days after the exchange gave an update regarding the technical issues. Last week, Mt. Gox said a technical glitch that had forced the exchange to suspend bitcoin withdrawals for a week. They discovered the transaction falsification glitch and same flaw alleged to have been used to steal all of the bitcoins worth about $2.7 million from Silk Road 2.0 . Later, some sources close to the matter have confirmed that more than 700,000 bitcoins are indeed missing from MtGox records, in a ' slow-leak ' hack that went on for years. The repeated technical gl...