Uppsala Security, a provider of security tools and services for crypto AML/CTF, transaction tracking, risk management, regulatory compliance, and cyber security, announced today that they’ve successfully helped a victim recover approximately 5 million KRW (over $4,000 USD).
According to the Crypto Incident Response Center (CIRC), the fraud case was reported by the victim in early November 2021. Uppsala Security’s investigators then tracked and analyzed the flow of the victim’s reported digital assets and confirmed that the stolen funds had reached an ‘exchange wallet’.
Promptly, Uppsala Security’s investigators provided a virtual asset tracking report to the victim in order to help prevent the possibility that the suspect may have transferred the stolen funds to an abroad exchange. The victim then submitted the tracking report to the police showing who was then holding the lost cryptocurrencies, and the cybersecurity team at the local Police Station then conducted a full investigation and successfully identified the incident’s suspect.
As a result, the police were able to quickly arrest the malicious actor and help the victim recover the lost funds. According to Uppsala Security, the full recovery of the funds is still in progress, but a portion of the assets (around 5 million KRW), have already been recovered.
The Crypto Incident Response Center (CIRC) utilizes CATV, a Crypto Analysis Transaction Visualization tool, and CARA, an Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning based Crypto Analysis Risk Assessment tool, to track the stolen crypto tokens and understand how the stolen funds were laundered.
“Due to the nature of blockchain technology, it is very difficult to recover lost/stolen assets in cases related to fraud or hacking. Nonetheless, our CIRC team successfully realized a third case of recovering stolen virtual assets in South Korea, and this is extremely significant in the virtual asset industry as it shows that technology can be successfully utilized to address some of the complex problems we are facing today. We hope that these successful cases will provide an opportunity to move away from the misconception that virtual assets cannot be recovered once lost.”
– Min Woo Ku, Uppsala Security’s Country Manager for South Korea
In addition, Uppsala Security along with Bithumb — a South Korea-based virtual asset exchange, contributed to the full recovery of assets lost in two cases, once in April and another during August 2021, including the identification of the incident’s suspects by utilizing an Uppsala Security tracking report.
