It may be hard to believe but Microsoft is the latest to become the victim of cryptocurrency bubble and suffered a loss of worth of whooping $10 million. The company lost gift cards worth 10 million dollars in an online scheme wreaked by the company’s own employee. He sold all the purchased X box gift cards as boatloads of bitcoin.
Volodymyr Kvashuk, a Microsoft engineer was asked to replicate the purchases of X box gift cards but he observed that he actually got a X box gift card code for each purchase. The idea then occurred to him of selling off the gift cards for bitcoins instead of cash. For this purpose, he used many crypto currency market places where he sold proportions of gift cards at reduced prices which would then be resold to the buyers needing the code.
He initiated the scheme with $10 X box gift card and gradually shifted to the $100 dollar cards. He also got a help from a few colleagues and thus was able to stow up.
In order to avert company’s eye, he redirected his internet traffic through off shore servers in Japan and other countries. Not only this but he also used several user profiles for the transactions and used money laundering websites such as Chip Mixer to hide the trail further.
But of course, it could not be kept inconspicuous by the company for very long. There was a sudden rise in the purchase of gift cards and the company already opened a probe.
Without him knowing, his house was raided in July,2019 and he was deported to his home town Ukraine. However, the internal security of Microsoft was also not strong enough which resulted in the massive loss. For each simulated purchase of the X box gift card, he still got a real code which is a major loop hole in the security of the massive tech-giant.
