• A hacker in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam was sentenced to 10 years in prison for stealing 300 million Vietnamese dong (close to $13,000) from a crypto entrepreneur’s coin trading site.
• The hacker, Nham Hoang Khang, was charged with extortion and ordered to return the stolen funds.
• The cyberattacks targeted the trading platform’s vulnerabilities, allowing Khang to gain control over an employee’s account and 30,000 USDT.

A hacker based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for stealing 300 million Vietnamese dong (close to $13,000) from a crypto entrepreneur’s coin trading site. The man, Nham Hoang Khang, was charged with extortion and ordered to return the stolen funds.

The cyberattacks that resulted in the theft were directed at the trading platform’s vulnerabilities. This allowed the hacker to gain control over the account of an employee and around 30,000 USDT. Vu Ngoc Chau, the founder of the crypto exchange, had established it in 2018 to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers of cryptocurrencies. Users were required to open accounts and provide personal information, such as phone number, email address and a copy of an ID document.

In October 2020, Khang used his phone to create multiple accounts on the platform. He discovered that the website, T-rex.exchange, had several weaknesses which could be exploited to obtain both data and digital currency. The following month, he managed to gain access to the compromised account and the funds it contained.

The T-rex team quickly noticed the irregular transactions and locked the account to prevent further operations with the cryptocurrency. Once Khang saw that he no longer had access to the account, he obtained the personal data of 29,000 customers and created a large number of fake orders, while threatening with further cyberattacks.

Vietnamese authorities arrested and charged the hacker for extorting the trading platform’s owner. On Friday, the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court sentenced Khang to 10 years in prison and ordered him to return the misappropriated funds. The court also imposed a fine of 1.5 million dong (around $65) for the damage caused by the hacker’s actions.