According to a report, PUBG was used to hack $2.5 million by an online group of criminals in Turkey. The authorities have detained them on the charges of theft from a cryptocurrency company which mainly deals in Bitcoins. The way that these PUBG hackers communicated is one of the biggest stories.
The criminals were playing PUBG right before the Bitcoin hack
It is reported that these group of criminals who were behind the security breach was indeed communicating on the multiplayer video game PUBG. This was right before they carried out the hack.
Large amounts of digital currencies which include, Ether, Bitcoin, etc. which are held by a single entity are one of the biggest targets of online criminals. Local news confirmed that 24 people have been detained after hacking an Istanbul based cryptocurrency firm.
After the early reports, the authorities also confirmed that two of the firm’s wallets had been compromised by the hack. The wallets had a combined total cryptocurrencies worth of 13 million lira which is $2.47 million. The funds directly went from the company’s wallet to the hacker’s wallet. The wallet mostly had Bitcoins which is untraceable.
How did they recover the money?
A special joint operation was launched. It was across the provinces of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Afyonkarahisar, Bursa, Edirne, Bolu and Antalya. This operation led to successful attacks. These raids discovered 54,000 Lira in cash and a further 1.3 million Lira in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. All of it had been returned to the companies.
This was one of the most unique hacks to date as the criminals actually used PUBG to communicate and stay off the grid. We’ve reached out to Tencent about this latest PUBG “hack” used by the attackers and the measures they will be taking so that nothing of the sorts happen in the future. We’re yet to hear it back from them.
