Crypto exchange KuCoin resumes services after hacking incident

Singaporean digital asset KuCoin resumes its withdrawal and deposit services after its $281 million security breach that happened this September. The crypto exchange was able to recover the stolen 176 tokens out of 230. CEO Johnny Lyu said that an insurance fund would completely cover all stolen funds of the customers.

Following the recovery update on November 11 that the exchange recovered 84% of the stolen funds, KuCoin confirmed that it will be back in business by November 22. Lyu took to Twitter to announce the latest update regarding the hacking incident:

‘(1/3) Latest updates about #KuCoin Security Incident: So far, 84% of the affected assets have been recovered via approaches like on-chain tracking, contract upgrade and judicial recovery. As asked by law enforcement, we will publish all the details once the case is closed.’

One or more hackers accessed the private keys of KuCoin’s hot wallets and were able to get their hands on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether, TRON, Stellar, and more. According to Lyu, the hackers used a private key that was leaked online to gain access to the hot wallets. It was also announced that the cold wallets are safe and only the hot wallets were affected.

The exchange estimated a total loss of $150 million dollars but crypto analytics Chainanalysis estimated a total of $275 million dollars.

KuCoin is reportedly one of the most active crypto exchanges in the world with over $100 million daily average volumes. As of October 7, the exchange has recovered $204 million of the stolen funds. They also made progress in finding a suspect.

‘KuCoin is gradually restoring the deposit and withdrawal services of all tokens, and the full service of USDT will also resume soon. Please stay tuned for the official announcement,’ KuCoin announced.

A few days after the hacking incident in September, the hackers tried to sell the stolen tokens to other centralized exchanges but failed to do so because it was blocked immediately. The incident resulted in KuCoin halting its trading competition as well.

After gaining access to 65 digital assets in October, KuCoin’s spokesperson announced the exchange’s next move: ‘We are still discussing with all projects affected to work out the best solution for three parties — token holders, the project and KuCoin users.’

The $281 million security breach of KuCoin is among the highest in the history of cryptocurrency.