In brief
- Two Hyundai buildings in South Korea were evacuated due to a bomb threat on Friday.
- An anonymous caller demanded 13 Bitcoin as a ransom payment to stop the threatened attack.
- The buildings were searched by special forces and no explosives were found.
Two Hyundai Group buildings in Seoul, South Korea were evacuated after a caller threatened to blow up the buildings if they didn’t get 13 Bitcoin, or about $1.1 million in ransom, according to a local media report from MBN.
According to the report, a caller phoned the South Korean police on Friday morning detailing the plot and requesting the Bitcoin ransom.
“If you don't give me 13 Bitcoin, I will blow up the Hyundai Group building at 11:30 a.m. and then take a bomb to Yangjae-dong and detonate it,” the caller allegedly said.
The buildings were evacuated and searched by special forces, but no explosives were found.
Friday’s threat is reportedly the latest in a trend of bomb threats that have plagued South Korean firms this week. According to MBN, threats were made against Samsung Electronics buildings on Thursday and that of a Korean telecom company on Wednesday. It is not immediately clear if any Bitcoin ransom demands were made in the prior threats.
The Hyundai threat is not the first documented bomb threat which demanded a Bitcoin ransom.
A bomb threat in Japan took place in 2020 after an attacker threatened to place bombs in churches and schools, demanding 40 BTC. Prior to that, global bomb threats in 2018 demanding Bitcoin payments drew the attention of the U.S. National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.
Violence has surrounded crypto this year amid Bitcoin’s climb to new highs. Wrench attacks, or physical attacks in which an assailant attempts to coerce crypto from a victim, have been on the rise with more than 65 now documented in a public database run by Casa CTO Jameson Lopp.
In November, a Russian man detonated airsoft grenades and set off a smoke bomb after storming a St. Petersburg-based crypto exchange. The same week, a man posed as a delivery driver in San Francisco and tied up a homeowner while stealing $11 million in crypto.
Earlier this month, Austrian police arrested two individuals who allegedly brutally beat a young man and set him on fire in the backseat of his car. Police suggested greed as a potential motive, due to withdrawals from the victim’s crypto wallet.