KuCoin Suspected Hackers Found: Johnny Lyu Announcement

The KuCoin suspected hackers were reportedly found according to the latest announcement by the exchange’s CEO Johnny Lyu so let’s read more in the breaking cryptonews today.

Lyu announced today he has found the KuCoin suspected hackers and said that the law enforcement are now involved in pursuing the case further. As Lyu tweeted:

 “After a thorough investigation, we have found the suspects of the [Sept. 26] #KuCoin Security Incident with substantial proof at hand.”

The CEO of the exchange added that the police was involved in the pursuit of the hackers, after last month’s hack where more than $150 million and $280 million in digital assets were stolen from the exchange. What initially seemed like a technical issue, later developed into something much bigger. On September 26^th, hundreds of millions of dollars were moved from the exchange’s hot wallets to an address that was not related to the platform. At that time, the administrator of the KuCoin Telegram channel said:

 “If any user fund is affected by this incident it will be covered completely by KuCoin and our Insurance fund.”

Ocean Protocol Foundation is initiating a hard fork of the Ocean Token contract which will have the effect of reversing the ill-effects of the hack for anyone choosing to adopt the new version of the contract. Read our full statement here:https://t.co/zw0YtiLKOi

— Ocean Protocol (@oceanprotocol) September 27, 2020

Many projects behind hacked tokens prevented the thieves from liquidating the assets where it was possible. These projects include Tether, Ocean Protocol, Ampleforth, and others. Not all of the affected tokens such as Synthetix and Ethereum were blocked. This happened because these tokens are decentralized and are able to prevent blacklisting. Johnny  Lyu said that KuCoin is slowly re-opening deposits and withdrawals for certain tokens that were affected in the hack.

The KuCoin hacker swapped LTC for BTC on the CEX crypto exchange according to the reports. About $13 million from the recent hack were laundered through decentralized exchanges but more than $9 million went to centralized exchanges. According to the reports by Chainalysis, there were about $281 million stolen from the KuCoin hack and the hackers purchased 875 BTC from centralized exchanges using stolen coins like Litecoin. Most of the funds were laundered using decentralized exchanges.

The newly gathered data suggests that the hackers that recently compromised the hot wallets of the KuCoin exchange could have taken more than the initial estimation of $150 million. Considering the updated numbers, the recent KuCoin hack could be the third-largest in history with about $280 million stolen. As reported recently, an unknown group of hackers exploited the hot wallets of the exchange and the platform instantly issued an official statement informing that the total amount was stolen reached $150 million worth of different digital assets. Furthermore, KuCoin guaranteed that the hack was small and that the insurance fund of the platform will cover for the lost digital assets.