For those who do not remember, Bitmarket.eu used to be a Bitcoin exchange run by two Polish developers. The developers, Maciej Trebacz and Pawel Makulski operated the exchange platform for about two years before it became a victim of a hacking incident. While Bitmarket.eu has been reduced to a cryptocurrency blog following the incident, the hacker who may have been responsible for its plight may soon be facing trial.
According to reports, a Russian national by the name Yevgeniy Nikulin may have been the person who broke into Bitmarket.eu back in 2012. The hacking incident may have led to a loss of over 20161 BTCs in total during that time, which is now worth over $13.8 Million. The report suggests that most of these losses were due to a security breach suffered by Bitcoinica, a Bitcoin-based online CFD trading service. Bitcoinica experienced two security breaches, once in 2011 resulting in a loss of 43000 BTCs and the second time in 2012 which led to a loss of 18000 BTCs.
The recent arrest of Nikulin in the Czech Republic and subsequent investigation has led the investigators to believe that he was responsible for not only hacking into Dropbox, Formspring, and LinkedIn but also for the theft of over 620 BTCs from Bitmarket.eu. While the number of Bitcoin stolen by Nikulin from Bitmarket is negligible compared to the total cumulative losses incurred by the platform, there is no indication at the moment about whether he had a role to play in the Bitcoinica hacking incidents as well.
Nikulin is said to have used the username “chinabig01” on LinkedIn and Dropbox. The same username and associated email address was used by Bitmarket.eu hacker as well, which has led the investigators to believe that all these hacks were the handiwork on the same person.
The updates on Bitcoin Talk show that a significant number of Bitmarket.eu users received a portion of their funds back. The Bitmarket.eu domain seems to have changed hands since then and the blog is currently being handled by someone called Lewis Nixon, a market analyst from Leicester, UK.
Ref: Softpedia | Bitcoin Talk | Image: NewsBTC