KuCoin CEO Says The Hack Was “Small”, Insurance Will Cover Everything

KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu explained that the recent hack of the exchange was actually small and that the insurance of the company will cover everything as we are reading further in the latest crypto news.

Following the KuCoin $150 million hacks, during a live session on YouTube, the KuCoin CEO said that the hack was not that big and the next move is to salvage the situation while giving comfort to the users. He also noted that although he cannot show how much of the company’s total assets were affected, the stolen fund’s amount is small for the exchange and that the company will cover all of the losses with the insurance fund. The company initially noticed the abnormalities at 2:51 today when it received an alert from the internal risk-monitoring systems. More alerts followed which indicated abnormal transfers from the wallet.

At 3:01 AM, the exchange received the alert about the balance from the monitoring system and three minutes later, more alerts came in showing more abnormal XRP withdrawal which was followed by another alert saying that the company’s hot wallet is running out of balance. More alerts followed minutes later showing abnormal BTC withdrawal alongside other tokens. while these withdrawals were ongoing, the company set up a team to shut down the wallet services. However, the shut down did not do much to stop the hackers. At this point, the exchange realized that the private keys of the hot wallet leaked and they immediately started moving the balance in the hot wallet to the cold storage which took about 30 minutes.

Lyu said that the exchange will publish the addresses used by the hackers on the channels of the platform and the report also showed that an Ethereum address used for the operation had about $150 million in ETH and ERC20 tokens. KuCoin is working with the international police and its largest clients for an in-depth investigation into the incident. The CEO also said they had asked most crypto exchanges such as Binance, OKEx, BitMex, and OKEx to blacklist the hackers’ wallet address and assist with the investigation.

The crypto community was really quick to swing into the action to assist the exchange in the request. BitFinex CTO Paolo ARdoino said that they froze about 13 million USDT on EOS that was a part of the hack while Tether froze about 20 million tokens on ETH in the address for the hack. While the trading services are available, the withdrawals and deposits will remain closed until the company completes the wallet upgrade.