Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid stole $ 94 million

[Tomcat]

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid has been hacked. Unknown hackers hacked into its servers and stole crypto assets, whose value at current rates is estimated at $ 94 million.

While the company is investigating what happened, deposits and withdrawals are temporarily not working.

Liquid reports that the theft occurred due to the fact that attackers were able to access the exchange's hot wallets, where funds for daily transactions are stored. Liquid is currently transferring the remainder of the funds to cold wallets and trying to block hackers from accessing their network.

The company representatives published a series of tweets (1, 2, 3, 4), in which they listed the addresses of the wallets where the attackers took the funds.

Blockchain analyst company Elliptic reports that criminals have stolen just over $ 94 million in cryptocurrency (the amount was calculated at the time of the attack, as prices for some cryptocurrencies began to fall after the news of the hack). The researchers say that this amount includes about $ 45 million in Ethereum tokens, which criminals are already converting into other assets through the Uniswap and SushiSwap decentralized exchanges in an effort to avoid freezing stolen funds.

Interestingly, this is the second hack Liquid is facing. The first attack on the exchange took place in November 2020. Then the hackers penetrated the company's internal network and stole the data of a number of customers, but could not steal the cryptocurrency.

A source

 

[Brother]

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitpoint has been hit by a hack. $ 32 million stolen​

The management of one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan, Bitpoint, reported the hack that occurred on the evening of July 11, 2019. The platform is currently temporarily out of service, and deposits and withdrawals are frozen.

The hack was discovered due to bugs that started popping up with the Ripple transfer. Twenty-seven minutes after the first problems were discovered, Bitpoint administrators realized that they had been hacked, and after another three hours, they were able to identify the theft of other cryptocurrency assets.

The attack reportedly affected both hot and cold wallets of the exchange, meaning the Bitpoint infrastructure was completely compromised. In total, unknown attackers stole 3.5 billion yen (about $ 32 million) in the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ripple and Ethereal. At the same time, only 2.5 billion yen ($ 23 million) belonged to the clients of the exchange, while the rest of the funds belonged to the exchanger itself (these were reserve funds and profit).

So far, the Bitpoint administration has not announced how it plans to return the stolen funds to clients. It should be noted that in such cases, Japanese financial regulators are tough. For example, the Japanese exchanges Coincheck and Zaif have already been attacked by hacker attacks, and in both cases, the exchanges were forced to reimburse customers for losses.

The technical details of the attack on Bitpoint have not yet been disclosed, as exchange employees and law enforcement officials are still investigating the incident.