Crypto exchange KuCoin has lost almost $200 million worth of cryptocurrencies in Ethereum, Bitcoin, Litecoin, XRP, Bitcoin Satoshi Vision, Stellar, TRON, and Tether following a major security breach.
KuCoin said it started to learn about the online heist after detecting large amounts of withdrawals on September 26th. The crypto exchange confirms that the theft only involves crypto assets stored in its hot wallets. Cryptocurrencies in cold storage are safe.
In a recent update, KuCoin Global CEO Johnny Lyu provides a list of addresses that were involved in suspicious transactions that have amounted to $190.9 million. Here’s a summary of the tokens that were stolen on KuCoin:
- $152.7 million in Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum-based tokens
- $10.8 million in Bitcoin (1,008 BTC)
- $4.4 million in XRP (18,495,798 XRP)
- $1.2 million in Litecoin (26,733 LTC)
- $2.4 million in Bitcoin SV (14,713 BSV)
- $701,000 in Stellar (9,588,383 XLM)
- $4.7 million in Tron (TRX) and Tron-based tokens
- $14 million worth in Tether
The crypto exchange executive points to “private key leakage” as the reason for the outflow of the crypto assets.
KuCoin is currently working with international law enforcement to investigate the attack, Lyu says.
“We are in contact with many major crypto exchanges such as Huobi, Binance, OKEx, BitMax, and Bybit, as well as blockchain projects, security agencies, and law enforcement to work on this. Some effective measures have been taken, and we will update with more details soon.”
Bitfinex CTO Paolo Adrino confirms in a Twitter post that Tether has frozen a total of 20 million USDT on ETH while his company has frozen 13 million USDT on EOS.
PSA: re #KuCoin hack@bitfinex froze 13M Tether USDt on EOS as part of the hack@Tether_to just froze 20M Tether USDt sitting on this Ethereum address https://t.co/GYmESH44da as precautionary measure.
Stay safe everyone!
— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) September 26, 2020
In the meantime, KuCoin reassures its users that any losses will be covered by its insurance fund and that they are working hard to prevent future lapses in security.
“The KuCoin team deeply regret this incident and will continue to make more efforts and optimizations on the security mechanism, and face this incident head-on with no excuses.”
