Nearly $400 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from the troubled FTX exchange in the past few hours. After declaring bankruptcy a few hours ago, the exchange said it had been hacked.
The FTX community chat admin sent a message to the exchange’s official Telegram group saying the bankrupt platform had been hacked and that all apps were malware.
The administrator advised users to remove the app and not to visit the website or open their mobile applications as they may end up with a Trojan.
Over $380 million went in user funds
The actual amount withdrawn from the exchange is yet to be determined as sources claim it to be between $380 million and $600 million.
According to Etherscan, the conduit address has processed more than 140 transactions and received funds from multiple wallets linked to FTX. In just two hours, the address received 83,878.63 ETH (over $105.3 million).
In addition to receiving funds, the wallet also exchanged USDT for DAI. It also transferred funds to other networks such as Binance Smart Chain and Solana.
Crypto intelligence firm Arkham Intelligence revealed that the hacker was rapidly dumping all assets into the Cowswap DEX aggregator.
As of press time, Arkham also said that the hacker ended up dumping LINK, MATIC, AAVE, and SHIB. The hackers still have PAXG and SNX, which can be sold later.
Meanwhile, USDT issuer Tether has blacklisted $27.5 million USDT on Solana and $3.9 million USDT on Avalanche.
Exchange Hack An Inside Job?
Much is still unknown, with many believing that if it is a hack, it must be the work of an insider. Adam Cochran noted That the hacker had access to the “private key, root level on the website, and publisher key access to the apps”.
another user Thrown light on That breach involved an Apple Publisher key breach. This allowed the “hacker” to sideload malware into the FTX app. Many users are reporting that their FTX balance is now showing zero.
Many in the cryptocurrency community point to the fact that FTX has never been hacked since it started its operations. Therefore, the idea of an exchange getting hacked immediately after filing for bankruptcy is shady.
Moving FTX Funds to Cold Storage
However, official sources of the crisis-ridden company are yet to confirm the development.
FTX.US General Counsel Rhine Miller admitted that the exchange was investigating “abnormalities with wallet movement related to the consolidation of FTX balances across exchanges”.
Miller further tweeted that the exchange moved its funds to cold storage following an “unauthorized transaction”. he said:
“After the Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Filing – FTX US and FTX [dot] Com took precautionary measures to move all digital assets to cold storage. The process was sped up this evening – to minimize losses on spotting unauthorized transactions. ,
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