Cryptocurrency exchange BTC-Alpha suffered a ransomware attack earlier this month, and the company’s founder has blamed a competitor.
Reports of a potential attack surfaced last week when threat intelligence firm DarkTracer posted a screenshot to Twitter of a public leak site operated by the Lockbit ransomware group that claimed to have encrypted BTC-Alpha’s data. Lockbit threatened to leak the stolen data if a ransom was not paid by Dec. 1. That same day, a press release on PRLeap from Alpha founder and CEO Vitalii Bodnar alleged the attack was the work of a competing cryptocurrency firm.
BTC-Alpha did not issue a public statement on its website.
In a Telegram chat with SearchSecurity, BTC-Alpha confirmed it was “hacked in the beginning of November” and that work at the U.K.-based cryptocurrency platform had already resumed. When asked about the PR Leap statement from Bodnar, Alpha told SearchSecurity that “Vitalii Bodnar feels like a competitor was responsible for the attack.”
