The hacker got through by exploiting a vulnerability in its risk control team’s second review process to access the personal funds of about 90 users
Bitrue, Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, on Thursday revealed that it lost about US$4.5 million worth of XRP (valued at US$0.488) and US$237,500 in ADA (valued at $0.095) coins following a major hacking attack.
The time of the breach was at 1 am GMT+8, as reported by Cointelegraph.
The company explained in its official Twitter account that the hacker got through by “exploiting a vulnerability in our Risk Control team’s 2nd review process to access the personal funds of about 90 Bitrue users”. Bitrue claimed that the breach was immediately noticed and the hacker’s activity was swiftly suspended.
Bitrue then proceeded to notify Huobi, Bittrex, and ChangeNOW (the receiving exchanges of the incoming ill-gotten funds), and credited them with helping freeze the relevant transactions and accounts, before releasing a statement to assure users that their personal funds are insured. Bitrue said that “those affected by this breach will have their funds replaced by us as soon as possible”.
Despite the hack, the crypto exchange said it will still go ahead with its plans to go live with its service functionality as soon as possible. The log-in and trading support are expected to relaunch soon, but the withdrawal function will remain offline for now.
To maintain transparency, Bitrue has provided a link to trace the flow of funds on the XRP block explorer for the public. The Singaporean authorities have also been notified to help to identify the hacker.
Also Read: Go-Jek investor Warburg Pincus sets up new US$4.25B fund for China, Southeast Asia
In 2019 alone, there have been a total of seven hackings into crypto exchanges prior to Bitrue.
The post Singapore’s crypto exchange Bitrue loses nearly US$5M to hacking attack appeared first on e27.