Bitrue exchange has shared that one of its hot wallets has been hacked, and an enormous amount of Shiba Inu, as well as Polygon and other cryptos, have been drained from it. The hacker has already begun selling the stolen crypto.
Further exploit of funds prevented, but billions of cryptos lost
According to a Twitter thread of Bitrue, earlier today, an unknown individual or a group exploited one of the hot wallets of the exchange. The attackers managed to get away with crypto worth roughly $23 million.
That list includes, according to PeckShieldAlert, 22.5 billion Shiba Inu, 320 ETH, 173,000 QNT, 46.4 million GALA, 756.15 million HOT and 310,000 MATIC.
2/4: The attackers were able to withdraw assets worth approximately 23M USD in ETH, QNT, GALA, SHIB, HOT and MATIC. The affected hot wallet only holds less than 5% of our overall funds. The rest of our wallets remain secure and have not been compromised.
— Bitrue (@BitrueOfficial) April 14, 2023
Bitrue stressed that the hacked wallet held only 5% of the overall amount of crypto stored by the exchange. The rest of its wallets were not compromised.
Due to the situation, withdrawals have been suspended by Bitrue, and it will resume operations on April 18. The tweet promises that all affected customers who are identified will receive full compensation for their losses.
Hackers begin selling
PeckShieldAlert has reported that the aforementioned amounts of SHIB, GALA, QNT and MATIC were sold for approximately 8,540 ETH, pushing the price of QNT down 11% within three hours of that sale.
#PeckShieldAlert $QNT has dropped -11% within 3 hours
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) April 14, 2023
Bitrue Drainer-labeled address swapped 173K $QNT, 22.55B $SHIB, 46.4M $GALA and 310K $MATIC for ~8,540 $ETH
Bitrue Drainer received ~$22M worth of cryptos (~320 $ETH, 173K $QNT, 172.55B $SHIB, 46.4M $GALA, 756.15M $HOT and… pic.twitter.com/BLTCL5Kvz8
The overall amount of Shiba Inu stolen from Bitrue equals 172.55 billion.