On Monday, Gdac, a cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, confirmed that it was hacked on Sunday, resulting in the theft of almost $13 million worth of cryptocurrency. The attackers transferred 23% of Gdac's total custodial assets from its hot wallet to an unknown wallet, including 61 bitcoins (BTC), 350.5 ether (ETH), 10 million wemix tokens (WEMIX), and 220,000 USDT. Gdac has reported the incident to the authorities and is currently working to retrieve the stolen funds. Over the past year and a half, there have been several notable hacks and exploits in the cryptocurrency industry, including a $625 million hack on Axie Infinity's Ronin bridge last year and a $3.3 million exploit on decentralized finance protocol Sushi on Sunday.
WEMIX is the native token powering the eponymous crypto network.
The WEMIX team said that it is “closely monitoring the situation.” For detailed information and updates on the incident, WEMIX asked to refer to the official announcements made by GDAC. Rewrite this
Crypto exchanges use hot wallets to store a portion of their funds, which are readily available for immediate withdrawals and trading activities. However, hot wallets come with inherent security risks. Unlike cold wallets that keep assets offline, hot wallets are connected to the internet, which means that a security breach can result in significant financial losses for the exchange and its users.
GDAC's CEO, Seunghwan Han, confirmed that the exchange's wallet system and related servers were immediately suspended and blocked as soon as the hack was confirmed. The company has responded to the incident by collaborating with both domestic and foreign crypto exchanges and issuers to prevent the stolen coins from being laundered and to recover them.
In addition to notifying the public, GDAC has informed several authorities, including the Korea Internet & Security Agency, the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit, and the police, of the security breach.
According to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, cryptocurrency theft experienced a dramatic increase last year, with approximately $3.8 billion worth of assets stolen. This marks the most substantial one-year loss in the history of cryptocurrencies, with state-backed North Korean hackers thought to be among the most prolific perpetrators.
