Singapore-based digital currency Exchange Bitrue has suffered a cyber attack on Thursday, resulting in the loss of more than $4.5 million in XRP and ADA token.
According to the official announcement on Twitter, hackers exploited a vulnerability of the exchange’s risk control team’s 2nd level review process at around 1 am on June 27 (GMT+8) to gain access to the funds of around 90 Bitrue clients.
“The hacker used what they learned from this breach to then access the Bitrue hot wallet and move 9.3 million XRP and 2.5 million ADA to different exchanges,” the exchange noted.
The exchange is also tracking the movement of the stolen funds, which are now moved to several platforms including Huobi, Bittrex, and ChangeNOW. It has also set up a public link with XRP block explorer to let anyone check the flow of funds.
The attack was soon detected, and activity was temporarily suspended on Bitrue. We alerted the receiving exchanges about the situation, and wish to extend our thanks to @HuobiGlobal, @BittrexExchange and @ChangeNOW_io for their help in freezing the affected funds and accounts.
— Bitrue (@BitrueOfficial) June 27, 2019
The Singaporean exchange also assured the victims that the funds are insured and they will receive full compensation from the company. However, the exchange did not provide any timeline for the initiation of the process, only stating that the funds will be replaced “as soon as possible.”
Once again, I want to assure everybody that their personal funds are insured, and anybody affected by this breach will have their funds replaced by us as soon as possible.
— Bitrue (@BitrueOfficial) June 27, 2019
Exchanges should focus more on security
The exchange also involved the local enforcement to track the perpetrators and retrieve the stolen funds.
Bitrue was hacked only a month after the leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance was breached, leading to a theft of $40 million worth Bitcoin . Meanwhile, another Singaporean crypto exchange, DragonEx, was hacked earlier this year, however, it did not disclose the incurred damages to the public.
