Key Takeaways
- Bitrue announced that it had temporarily suspended all withdrawals and expects to reopen withdrawals on April 18, 2023, after conducting additional security checks.
- The exploiters drained assets worth approximately 23M USD in ETH, QNT, GALA, SHIB, HOT, and MATIC.
Leading crypto exchange Bitrue suffered a hit wallet exploit, leading to hackers draining crypto worth nearly $23 million. In a Twitter thread, Bitrue confirming the exploit announced that it had temporarily suspended all withdrawals and expects to reopen withdrawals on April 18, 2023, after conducting additional security checks.
“We have identified a brief exploit in one of our hot wallets on 07:18 (UTC), April 14, 2023. We were able to address this matter quickly and prevented the further exploit of funds,” Bitrue’s tweet reads. The exchange further added that all identified users affected by the exploit will be compensated in full.
Reportedly, the exploiters drained assets worth approximately 23M USD in ETH, QNT, GALA, SHIB, HOT, and MATIC. The exchange stated that the affected wallet contained less than 5% of overall reserves, and the remaining wallet was not compromised.
The exchange is yet to provide more details on how the attack took place. According to Coingecko data, Bitrue trades an average of over $1 billion a day, with bitcoin and ether among the most-traded token pairs.
This is not the first time the Singaporean exchange Bitrue has been a subject of an exploit. In 2019, Bitrue suffered a major exploit, losing 9.3 million and 2.5 million Cardano (ADA) from its hot wallet.
DeFi hacks are now becoming increasingly common in the crypto space. As per a Chainalyis report, around 97% of all crypto stolen in the first three months of 2022 has been taken from DeFi protocols, up from 72% in 2021 and just 30% in 2020.
Earlier this year, Defi platform Euler Finance suffered a flash loan exploit that drained the protocol of $196.9 million in various cryptocurrencies. However, the Euler Finance hacker had r returned nearly all recoverable funds following an ultimatum from project developers to either return 90% of stolen assets or face legal action.
