Hacker drains more than $150 million from KuCoin’s wallet

KuCoin, a cryptocurrency exchange was hacked late night on Sept 25. So far the exchange has not shared the official amount of funds they lost from their wallets. Some analysts estimate more than $150 million worth of crypto funds may be gone.

The exchange confirmed the hack, informing “Bitcoin, ERC20 and other tokens in KuCoin’s hot wallets were transferred out of the exchange”. As per one of the ETH addresses associated with the hack shows an excess of $154 million worth of ERC20 tokens moved out of Kucoin’s wallet.

These tokens include, 11,484 ETH, worth $4 million, Alchemy – $33 million, USDT – $19.8 Million, AMPL – $10.9 million, Ocean – $8.3 million, UTrust – $7.5 million and VIDT – $7.5 million, among other well-known ERC20 tokens – Link, Comp, DAI, Kyber Network, Fantom, Engine coin, etc.

At the moment it is unclear how much of BTC and non-ERC20 tokens were moved out from the exchange’s hot wallet. The official numbers are yet to be announced. According to the Bitcoin transaction analysis site – Cryptoquant, on the day of the hack over 1200 BTC was moved out from Kucoin’s wallet, which is significantly high compared to past days outflow.

Currently, the exchange maintains that while it’s hot wallets have been compromised, their “cold wallets are safe and unharmed”. Kucoin exchange assures that any user fund affected by this incident will be covered completely by KuCoin and their insurance fund.

Post the hack, KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu held a live stream to provide the explanation. According to Lyu, the private keys of their hot wallet had been compromised. After realizing the hack, KuCoin shut down their server and transferred untouched funds to a new address.

Update

• During the early morning hours on Sunday, the hacker moved a great number of ERC20 tokens to UniSwap DEX.
• New estimates suggest that hacker stole up to $200 million in crypto assets from the Kucoin wallet. The stolen assets were 1008 BTC, 14,713 BSV, XRP worth $18 million, 26,733 LTC, 9,588,383 XLM, Omni and EOS based tether (USDT) worth $14 million, and $154 million of ether and ERC20 tokens.