Liquid exchange loses $80 million in hack

Japanese exchange Liquid has lost over $80 million worth of cryptocurrencies in a security breach.

The exchange took to Twitter to reveal the wallets that were affected by the attack.

The following assets had been transferred to hacker's following addresses (Further investigation to come):
BTC: 1Fx1bhbCwp5LU2gHxfRNiSHi1QSHwZLf7q
ETH/EWT: 0x5578840aae68682a9779623fa9e8714802b59946
TRX: TSpcue3bDfZNTP1CutrRrDxRPeEvWhuXbp
XRP: rfapBqj7rUkGju7oHTwBwhEyXgwkEM4yby

— Liquid Global Official (@Liquid_Global) August 19, 2021

So far, Liquid has suspended withdrawals and deposits and is currently moving its assets into cold storage. And although the company is yet to verify how much was lost in the attack, it has promised to provide regular feedback while further investigations are ongoing.

Meanwhile, based on the addresses linked to the attack, it appears the attacker was able to steal almost $60 million worth of ETH and ERC-20 tokens, in addition to 107 BTC, 11 million XRP, and 9 million TRX.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that the compromised wallets held deposits belonging to crypto yield provider Celsius Network.

In April, Celsius integrated with Liquid to offer its customers accumulated returns on digital asset investments. The partnership made Liquid one of the first fiat-to-crypto exchanges to support Celsius’s native CEL token.

This is not the first time that Liquid is experiencing a security breach. In November 2018, the platform was compromised, exposing the personal information of its users to hackers.

Meanwhile, fellow exchange KuCoin has responded to the recent development by blacklisting the addresses involved in the attack.

We are aware of the #LiquidGlobal security incident, and the hacker's addresses have been added to the blacklist of #KuCoin. Hope everything is OK. 🙏 https://t.co/IasscGItZH

— Johnny_KuCoin (@lyu_johnny) August 19, 2021

The latest event comes a week after a white hat hacker exploited a bug on Poly Network, allowing him to withdraw over $600 million worth of cryptocurrencies.