UK-based Crypto exchange, EXMO Exchange announced today that it suffered a security breach in the early hours of Monday 21st December, and was halting all withdrawals as a consequence.
The exchange with a large customer base in Europe announced on its website that it noticed suspicious large withdrawal activity. A subsequent security audit report revealed that some amounts of BTC, XRP, ZEC, USDT, ETC and ETH in EXMO’s hot wallets were hacked and transferred out of the exchange.
The major crypto exchange which had $45 million in trading volume over the last 24 hours, confirmed that the affected hot wallets accounted for almost 5% of the total assets held at the exchange.
EXMO Exchange even posted the wallet addresses that were linked to the hack. They requested that other crypto exchanges and services block the wallets associated with the security breach.
EXMO said that they re-deployed hot wallets immediately once the suspicious activity detected. The crypto exchange also stated that they will will cover any user funds affected by the incident.
“We want to assure you that if any user fund is affected by this incident, it will be covered completely by Exmo,”
EXMO
Deposits to the exchange have been advised against and all withdrawals have been suspended.
The hack was reported to the cybercrime team of the Metropolitan Police in the UK and an internal investigation is being conducted.
Cyber Hacks in the Crypto World Continue to be a Problem
The hack of EXMO Exchange is the latest in a very long line of crypto exchange hacks.
According to a report published, losses from thefts, hacks, and fraud in the crypto sphere dropped to $1.8 billion for the first 10 months of this year. Last year, losses from thefts, hacks, and fraud in the crypto world reached an all-time high of $4.5 billion worldwide.
In September, $150 million in cryptocurrency was stolen by a hacker from KuCoin the having been stored in hot wallets. With striking similarities to the EXMO hack, the Singapore-headquartered digital asset exchange KuCoin detected large withdrawals of bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) tokens to an anonymous wallet address.
