Bitrue hacked crypto stolen worth $23 million
The renowned cryptocurrency exchange Bitrue has fallen victim to a hack that has resulted in a loss of around $23 million in cryptocurrency. The manner in which the attack was carried out was not explicitly stated by Bitrue. The stock exchange is currently investigating the situation.
Bit threat tweeted:
We have identified a short exploit in one of our hot wallets at 07:18 (UTC), 14 April 2023. We were able to resolve this issue quickly and prevented further exploitation of funds.
According to the announcement from Bitrue, all withdrawals have been temporarily stopped due to a “brief exploitation” of their hot wallet. The exchange will carry out further security inspections and has planned to restore withdrawals by 18 April 2023.
Bitrue stated that the attackers were successful in withdrawing funds in the form of various cryptocurrencies, including ETH, QNT, GALA, SHIB, HOT and MATIC.
The exchange clarified that the affected wallet represented less than 5% of the total reserves and assured users that the remaining wallets were not affected by the security breach.
The exchange has also promised to keep its users informed of any updates and has taken measures to minimize the breach’s impact.
Bitrue records an average trading volume of more than $1 billion each day, with Bitcoin and Ether among the top token pairs traded on the exchange.
Full compensation promised for affected Bitrue users
Bitrue’s management highlighted that their quick response to the incident enabled them to prevent further loss of funds. They have also assured their users that they will be fully compensated for any losses that occur due to the security breach.
The perpetrator is said to have started the sale of the stolen cryptocurrencies. According to a report from PeckShieldAlertthe aforementioned quantities of SHIB, GALA, QNT and MATIC were sold for around 8540 ETH, causing the price of QNT to fall by 11% within three hours of the sale.
Additional information about the recent crypto theft from Bitrue has been shared by crypto intelligence firm Arkham.
The data published on Arkham’s The Twitter account indicates that the total amount stolen was approximately $24.4 million, with most of the stolen funds consisting of QNT, GALA, and SHIBA INU tokens.
Interestingly, the data suggests that the hacker did not convert the majority of the stolen SHIB and HOT tokens. The situation is still being investigated by Bitrue, and it remains to be seen if any further information will be revealed.
The recent hack of Bitrue is yet another example of the ongoing security challenges facing crypto and DeFi projects. In a similar incident, South Korean crypto exchange GDAC reported that a hacker had stolen nearly $14 million from the platform, prompting a temporary suspension of all transactions for a period of two weeks.
Featured image from UnSplash, charts from TradingView.com
