18-Year Old Hacker Arrested By Japanese Police After Stealing $134,000 In Monacion

18-year old male from Japan was charged with theft by the Japanese local prosecutors according to a report that was published in the local crypto news outlet by the Metropolitan Police Department of Japan. The prosecutors accuse the young man of stealing more than 15 million Yen worth of Monacoin-Litecoin’s hard fork.

The report shows that this is the first time where local authorities charged a hacker for crypto theft in the country. The hacker breached Monappy- an online wallet that is used by crypto investors for storing digital assets.

The teenager took advantage of the weak spots of the website after being slow because of glitches related to access overload. Initially, he made repeated transfer requests to his own account in a very short period and confused the system by overloading it. After overwhelming the servers, he managed to increase his balance. He then realized that his account was filled up with the desired amount and he transferred the cryptocurrency to a third-party wallet, exchanged them for popular cryptocurrencies and at the end cashed them out into fiat.

The suspect was arrested and during his questioning he said:

 “I felt as if I’d found a secret trick and thought I would take out all of the MonaCoin.”

The Tor browser is one of the key platforms used to steal cryptocurrency. It was initially developed as a security tool for the military of the United States in order to provide secure and confidential communication. It’s able to encrypt the content and diverts it through multiple servers before reaching the final destination. Tor is extremely popular between criminals because most of the hackers build a Tor proxy website and demand ransom from other cybercriminals.

The hacker gained access into Monappy’s system by using his Tor browser from his smartphone. He was able to cover his tracks by using the smart Tor software but the Japanese law enforcement was able to trace his actions because of the communication records that he left on the app’s native servers. More than 7,000 users of the crypto wallet Monappy were affected but the platform did, however, decided to compensate them for their losses.