One of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges falls victim to hackers, losing $ 85 million

The HTX cryptocurrency exchange and Huobi ECO Chain (HECO) have been subjected to a hacker attack. Their founder Justin Sun said that the trading platform will fully compensate for the losses of users.

HTX and Heco Cross-Chain Bridge Undergo Hacker Attack. HTX Will Fully Compensate for HTX's hot wallet Losses. Deposits and Withdrawals Temporarily Suspended. All Funds in HTX Are Secure, and the Community Can Rest Assured. We are investigating the specific reasons for the hacker…

— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) November 22, 2023

As Sun wrote on the X platform, deposits and withdrawals have been temporarily suspended, but all client funds are safe. «HTX and Heco’s cross-chain bridge has been hacked. HTX will fully compensate for the losses of the HTX hot wallet. Deposits and withdrawals have been temporarily suspended. All funds in HTX are safe and the community can rest assured. We are investigating the specific causes of the hacker attack. As soon as we complete the investigation and identify the cause, we will restore the services,» Justin Sun emphasized.

Cyvers Alert was the first to notice the suspicious transactions from the HECO bridge. According to their estimates, the attackers withdrew a total of $ 86 million from Tether (USDT), Huobi BTC (HBTC), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Uniswap (UNI), USD Coin (USDC), Chainlink (LINK), and TrueUSD (TUSD). The cybercriminals exchanged all the assets for Ethereum and distributed it among different accounts with an external owner (EOS).

The attack was also confirmed by PeckShield Alert analysts. Initially, the experts published a warning stating that 10,000 ETH ($ 19 million) had been withdrawn from the Heco bridge. After that, there were several more transfers to different addresses.

It was recently reported that one of the largest exchanges in South Korea, Upbit, was attacked more than 159,000 times. This figure has more than doubled in a year. In the first quarter of last year, Upbit recorded 73,249 hacking attempts, which is 2.17 times less than now. However, since 2020, the number of such cases has increased by 1800% - then it was approximately 8356.