Cryptocurrency Exchanges

UpBit Hacked for $49 Million in ETH

Admin

After the South Korean crypto-platform UpBit was hacked, it lost around 342,000 Ethereum (ETH) coins which is somewhat 49million USD.

The exchange, however has given assurance to its clients that the losses will be met by its own asset, but all withdrawals have been suspended for the mean time. The company says that it will need 14 days before it will restore the services back.

The hacking occurred on Wednesday and just after half an hour, UpBit declared that it had temporarily terminated all withdrawals and deposits because of server maintenance.

Later, on Nov 27, 2019, the exchange officially announced that 342,000 ETH worth 58 million approx. has been transferred from the UpBit ET hot wallet to an unknown wallet. The address of the unknown wallet is 0xa09871AEadF4994Ca12f5c0b6056BBd1d343c029”. 

At present all the funds of the exchange is transferred to a cold wallet. It is stated that will take at least 2 weeks for the exchange to begin its deposit and withdrawal again. The CEO of UpBit, Lee Seok-woo stated that he will let you know, when it is done.The culprit who stole the ETH from UpBit has off lately moved the coin in small portions. CZ has stated to freeze the crypto if it ends up on Binance.

  • Some of the industry experts believe that it is an inside job.
  • After some time, the Whale Alert Twitter account also published data which showcased- the hacker is transferring the ETH in small parts like from 1000 ETH to 10,000 ETH, to make it invisible.
  • On Dec 3, around 20000 ETH was transferred
  • It has also been mentioned that hackers tried to transfer a very small portion of the stolen cryptocurrency to Huobi exchange to find out how the transaction ends up.
  • The head of Binance has given the assurance to free the crypto transfer from Upbit, in case it is transferred to his exchange.
  • Meanwhile the UpBit traders wait for the exchange to remove the suspension of deposits and withdrawals and retrieve their lost ETH soon. However, it may still take some time.