History recurs with two crypto firms linked to Justin Sun hacked and stolen $115 million

The dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy world has wit­nessed anoth­er dis­tress­ing event of secu­ri­ty breach­es. Two cryp­to plat­forms linked to entre­pre­neur Justin Sun were hacked, result­ing in an esti­mat­ed theft of $115 mil­lion. These hack­ings sup­port the belief held by many regard­ing the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy exchanges and the need for enhanced secu­ri­ty pro­to­cols with­in the cryp­to world.

The first tar­get­ed plat­form, HTX, for­mer­ly known as Huo­bi, revealed a theft of around $30 mil­lion worth of cryp­tocur­ren­cies. At the same time, Heco Chain, a blockchain bridge asso­ci­at­ed with the Chi­nese-born Grena­di­an cryp­tocur­ren­cy entre­pre­neur, also encoun­tered an attack. These bridges facil­i­tate swift trad­ing and move­ment of var­i­ous dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies. How­ev­er, they have often become vul­ner­a­ble to mali­cious hack­ing activities.

Mar­ket ana­lyt­ics from Cryp­to­Quant report­ed the theft of approx­i­mate­ly $85.4 mil­lion in cryp­tocur­ren­cies from Heco Chain, pri­mar­i­ly in sta­ble­coins like USDT and ether. Addi­tion­al­ly, a sig­nif­i­cant amount of HTX’s native cryp­tocur­ren­cy, HBTC, was stolen, which result­ed in a notable drop in its val­ue on Thursday.

HTX prompt­ly respond­ed by sus­pend­ing deposit and with­draw­al ser­vices on both HTX and Heco Chain as a pre­cau­tion­ary measure. 

HTX and Heco Cross-Chain Bridge Under­go Hack­er Attack. HTX Will Ful­ly Com­pen­sate for HTX’s hot wal­let Loss­es. Deposits and With­drawals Tem­porar­i­ly Sus­pend­ed. All Funds in HTX Are Secure, and the Com­mu­ni­ty Can Rest Assured. We are inves­ti­gat­ing the spe­cif­ic rea­sons for the hacker…

— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) Novem­ber 22, 2023

Through a post on X (For­mer­ly Twit­ter), the exchange has sought to reas­sure users by stat­ing that it is iden­ti­fy­ing the source of the attack and has swift­ly imple­ment­ed urgent mea­sures to safe­guard user assets.

The cyber­crim­i­nals exe­cut­ed strate­gic actions, care­ful­ly trans­fer­ring stolen assets, main­ly focus­ing on con­vert­ing them into the more read­i­ly trad­ed ether asset. This strate­gic maneu­ver was intend­ed to avoid the risk of poten­tial freez­ing of sta­ble­coins like USDT and USDC.

Teth­er and Cir­cle, respon­si­ble for USDT and USDC, respec­tive­ly, were not imme­di­ate­ly avail­able to pro­vide com­ments, as report­ed by CNBC.

This inci­dent reminds sim­i­lar hack­ing crises in the his­to­ry of cryp­tocur­ren­cy. Sig­nif­i­cant breach­es such as the Poly Net­work Hack ($610 mil­lion), Coincheck Hack ($533 mil­lion), and the noto­ri­ous Mt. Gox Hack ($470 mil­lion) are the exam­ples that illus­trate inher­ent weak­ness­es with­in the sys­tem. These events near­ly suf­fice to under­score the crit­i­cal neces­si­ty for the cryp­to indus­try to imme­di­ate­ly strength­en its secu­ri­ty measures.

The Poly Net­work hack­ing end­ed with the hack­er return­ing the stolen funds, though in unusu­al cir­cum­stances. Coincheck expe­ri­enced severe reper­cus­sions, com­pelling the com­pa­ny to com­pen­sate affect­ed users. In con­trast, Mt. Gox encoun­tered pro­tract­ed legal dis­putes as cred­i­tors await­ed reim­burse­ment through a Civ­il Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Plan.

KuCoin (over $250 mil­lion in 2020) and Bit­mart (about 200 mil­lion in late 2021) also expe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant secu­ri­ty breach­es, fur­ther rais­ing con­cerns about the safe­ty of cen­tral­ized exchanges. Like­wise, the DAO and Worm­hole hacks brought atten­tion to vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in smart con­tracts, lead­ing to debat­ed choic­es among their respec­tive blockchain communities.

These events show how risky cryp­tocur­ren­cy can be. Secu­ri­ty is cru­cial. Using strong secu­ri­ty, doing detailed checks, and act­ing quick­ly are impor­tant to pro­tect peo­ple’s mon­ey and build trust in dig­i­tal mon­ey systems.