The official WeChat account in Shanghai, China, revealed a cryptocurrency theft case related to the theft of private keys on July 16. The case involved multiple groups of centralized exchange insiders. Colin Wu, editor-in-chief of Wu Shuo Blockchain, commented that the exchange involved was Huobi HTX, which is highly related to Sun Yuchen.
Huobi HTX users suffered huge amounts of money stolen
According to official documents in Shanghai, in May 2023, a platform user opened the virtual wallet software developed by the platform and discovered that someone had transferred millions of yuan worth of cryptocurrency a month ago. The user noticed that the wallet contained a backdoor that could steal private keys, and reported the incident in August of the same year.
The official case was revealed to be Huobi HTX, and Huobi Global Advisor Sun Yuchen later confirmed the news.
It was agreed that the robbery would take place two years later, and the murderer was someone else.
The police interviewed three Huobi employees. After arriving at the case, the three admitted that they had been working together to steal users' wallet private keys since March 2023. To evade police pursuit, the trio destroyed the database in May and agreed to steal users’ cryptocurrencies two years later. The prosecutor determined that the three did not steal the victim's cryptocurrency, but their behavior constituted a crime. The court finally sentenced the three to three years in prison and fined them 30,000 yuan.
But if these three didn’t steal the victim’s cryptocurrency, who was the murderer?
The murderer is one of Huobi’s own people
After investigation, an employee surnamed Zhang who once worked at Huobi has implanted a Trojan horse program in the wallet of another platform since July 2021. In April 2023, the prisoner surnamed Zhang transferred the cryptocurrency in the victim's wallet to his own address due to financial pressure.
Justin Sun: Employees’ personal behavior before the acquisition
Huobi Global Advisor Sun Yuchen responded to Colin Wu’s tweet: “The employees who stole the private keys were problem employees recruited during the old shareholder period before 2022 (Huobi’s operating rights changed hands in 2022). Huobi’s operating rights changed hands in 2022. The problem gradually came to light after the group conducted a financial and programming audit in 2023.
Justin Sun quoted Colin Wu's tweet and said: "The successful cracking of this case and the final judgment of the court have sent a clear signal to the outside world: the state and judicial authorities recognize and resolutely protect virtual currency assets, theft of virtual currency constitutes a crime, and the state will protect virtual currency assets, and crack down on criminal infringement of virtual currency. As a platform, it is our duty to protect user assets! Huobi user assets are absolutely safe and protected by both the platform and national laws!” But the netizen under the tweet did not agree with Sun Yuchen’s statement! Not footing the bill.
In recent years, many centralized exchanges have developed Web3 wallets through their own research and development or acquisitions. For users, asset security is the primary consideration. After several cases of tampering and theft occurred, how to win back the trust of users will become a major issue for each wallet.
This article Huobi Wallet was hacked by an insider and millions of coins were stolen. Justin Sun responded: The legacy of the acquisition first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.
