Huobi Global's cryptocurrency exchange HTX successfully recovered funds stolen by a hacker in September and issued a reward of 250 Ether as part of the settlement. On September 25, a hot wallet belonging to HTX was compromised and 5,000 ETH worth approximately $8 million was lost. However, the company quickly contacted the hacker and stated that they knew the identity of the perpetrator.

HTX proposed a deal to recover the stolen assets: The hacker would receive a 5% reward worth approximately $400,000 in exchange for returning 95% of the stolen funds by October 2. This offer came with the added incentive that HTX would refrain from taking any legal action against the hacker.

By October 7, the situation was resolved. Huobi Global investor and HTX advisor Justin Sun expressed his gratitude to the industry in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter). “Strengthening blockchain security and protecting user assets is a big challenge,” he said.

The year 2023 saw a significant increase in cyber attacks against crypto platforms. A study by blockchain security company Immunefi revealed that there were 76 breaches on cryptocurrency and Web3 platforms in the third quarter of 2023. This was a sharp rise to 30 hacks in the third quarter of 2022.

In a similar incident in the same week, decentralized protocol Mixin Network suffered a massive $200 million hack due to a vulnerability in a third-party cloud service. Mixin Network then announced a $20 million bug bounty for the return of stolen assets, but recovery appears uncertain.

In addition to these hacks, on October 6, National Security Advisor to the US Vice President Anne Neuberger suggested to Bloomberg that North Korean hackers may have been responsible for the Mixin Network breach. Neuberger stated that the techniques used were similar to attacks previously attributed to North Korea.