Hackers have attacked the Asian cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin and drained a huge amount of its funds. Reportedly, $150 million worth of funds have been taken out. The company says that funds from its hot wallets have been moved out of the exchange to an unknown wallet address.
Known as the most secure and advanced cryptocurrency exchange, the Singapore-headquartered company KuCoin has been hacked recently. While giving the security breach update in an official announcement on September 25, 2020, the company said that the assets have been taken out from its hot wallets while on the other hand, its cold wallets are completely safe and secure. The lost $150 million funds were worth of Bitcoin, ERC20, and some other cryptocurrencies.
The company said:
“We detected some large withdrawals since September 26, 2020 at 03:05:37 (UTC+8). According to the latest internal security audit report, part of Bitcoin, ERC-20 and other tokens in KuCoin’s hot wallets were transferred out of the exchange, which contained few parts of our total assets holdings. The assets in our cold wallets are safe and unharmed, and hot wallets have been re-deployed.”
The prominent cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume KuCoin has said to conduct a complete security review in order to ensure the security and protection of the assets of its users. As per the announcement post, the company will suspend the withdrawal and deposit service during this time period. As soon as the security review gets completed and the company ensures a safe state, it will start restoring the deposit and withdrawal service gradually after that.
KuCoin also said that it will cover the losses of those users whose funds have been affected during this security breach.
Today at 4:30 UTC, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the exchange Johnny Lyu appeared in a live stream and provided some details regarding the incident. He said that hackers had got private keys to the hot wallets of the exchange. He said that the company has now shifted the remaining holdings of those wallets to new hot wallets.