South Korean crypto-exchange Upbit got hacked, losing $51 million worth ETH

South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit got hacked resulting in 342,000 ETH (approx $50.6 Million) stolen from their hot wallet. The hack happened on Nov 27th, 2019 at 5:06 AM (GMT+1).

The stolen amount was moved from Upbit’s ETH hot wallet to the following address: 0xa09871AEadF4994Ca12f5c0b6056BBd1d343c029.

As a result, Upbit has suspended all crypto-asset deposits/withdrawals and has also transferred all crypto-assets from its hot wallet to a cold wallet. Additionally, Upbit said it will cover the losses from its own funds and will resume operation in approx 2 weeks.

Since the hack, people are sending a small ETH amount of transactions to the hacker’s wallet. Some of these transactions have private notes included – maybe asking to share the ETH with them or to return the stolen funds.

Latest update:

As of Nov. 28, the hacker has split the amount into 4 new addresses and is on the move to send the hack funds to exchanges and convert to privacy coins/ fiat currency.

Crypto-exchange hacks on the rise:

Crypto-hacks have been on the rise. In 2018 alone approx $1 Billion of crypto-assets were stolen from the crypto exchanges. In July 2019, a Japanese crypto exchange Bitpoint got hacked, losing approx. $32 million worth of crypto-assets. Other large hacks in 2019 include Binance ($41 Million), Bithumb ($19 Million) and Cryptopia ($16 Million).

Recently, experts at the United Nations(UN) pointed out that North Korea is targeting cryptocurrency exchanges and other financial institutions to fund its nuclear programs.

As per the UN experts’ research, the cryptocurrencies stolen last year by North Korea were exchanged into cash with at least 5,000 separate transactions across several countries, making it difficult to track.