Japanese Exchange Liquid Hack And Loses $80 Million in Attack

---

One of Japan’s crypto exchanges Liquid has been attacked by hackers. The attack led to the loss of $80 million in users’ funds. The funds were stolen in various cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Tron. Over 107 BTC, 9,000,000 TRX, 11,000,000 XRP, and almost $60 million worth of ETH and ERC-20 tokens were stolen, although Liquid is yet to come up with a precise figure.

Important Notice Update (further updates to come):
The following assets had been transferred to the hacker’s following addresses:
BTC: 1Fx1bhbCwp5LU2gHxfRNiSHi1QSHwZLf7q
ETH/EWT: 0x5578840aae68682a9779623fa9e8714802b59946

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

According to management of the exchange, only funds stored in their hot wallets are affected while efforts are being made to move funds to cold wallets currently. Withdrawals and deposits of digital assets have also been suspended while the exchange tries to figure out ways to recover the lost funds.

The importance of using cold wallets

Exchange hacks are a common occurrence in the cryptocurrency space. What is important is the preparedness of the exchanges in the case of such attacks. As clearly shown by this attack, funds stored in cold storage are much safer than funds in hot or warm wallets as the attackers could not attack the cold wallets.

This precaution is also strongly encouraged among private wallet owners to protect such wallets from attacks, especially if a significant amount of crypto is held. Liquid has released the wallet addresses where the funds were transferred as follows.

• BTC: 1Fx1bhbCwp5LU2gHxfRNiSHi1QSHwZLf7q
• ETH/EWT: 0x5578840aae68682a9779623fa9e8714802b59946
• TRX: TSpcue3bDfZNTP1CutrRrDxRPeEvWhuXbp
• XRP: rfapBqj7rUkGju7oHTwBwhEyXgwkEM4yby

Singaporean crypto exchange KuCoin has taken steps to help Liquid by blacklisting the wallet addresses released by Liquid. Meanwhile, this is not the first time Liquid has been hacked. In 2018, the exchange suffered another attack, although it was to steal the private information of its users. It is however not the only one that has suffered attacks.

Top cryptocurrency exchange Binance has also been attacked a number of times. It is however working hard recently to ensure that the platform is secure and that users’ confidence is earned again. This should be the strategy for all crypto exchanges to reduce their vulnerability and keep users and their funds safe.