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North Korean Attackers Linked to $54M CoinEx Hack, Blockchain Data Suggests
A hot wallet of the crypto exchange used to hold users’ tokens was exploited by attackers on Tuesday.
North Korean attackers linked to a recent crypto exploit could be behind the latest crypto business security causality, according to data cited by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT and verified by CoinDesk.
CoinEx exchange was hacked for an estimated $27 million on Tuesday – a figure that later ballooned to $54 million worth of tokens drained from the exchange as details of several impacted wallets were released by the exchange through Wednesday afternoon.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
#CoinExResponseUpdate - We've identified the 3rd series of suspicious wallet addresses linked to the hack:
— CoinEx Global (@coinexcom) September 13, 2023
We are working nonstop to track down the hackers' addresses. Here are the recently identified addresses:$BSC:
*0xC844F7178379782eC19F3EE6E399f2EB7b2b984F$ARB:…
The hackers siphoned ether (ETH), XRP, tron's TRX, MATIC, solana's SOL, kadena's KDA and dagger's XDAG tokens after exploiting a lax security measure on wallets used by the exchange. CoinEx has since released over 10 “suspicious” addresses on several networks, such as Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Arbitrum, where the tokens were transferred.
Analysis of these wallets by popular blockchain sleuth ZachXBT shows some transactions were routed to wallets that were involved in a $41 million exploit of crypto betting platform Stake earlier this month. Those wallets are linked to the North Korean attacker group Lazarus, infamous for targeting crypto businesses.
It appears North Korea is also responsible for the $54M @coinexcom hack from yesterday after they accidentally connected their address to the $41M Stake hack on OP & Polygon.
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) September 13, 2023
0x75497999432b8701330fb68058bd21918c02ac59 pic.twitter.com/9qZPdc3yhT
Another address was seemingly directly funded by the Stake attacker earlier this week and then received tokens from the CoinEx attack,
Meanwhile, CoinEx said Wednesday that the impacted funds represented a small amount of total user holdings and that all remaining assets on the exchange “remained safe.”
The Samoa-registered CoinEx traded over $22 million across 730 offered trading pairs on its platform in the past 24 hours, data shows.
Shaurya Malwa
Shaurya is the Co-Leader of the CoinDesk tokens and data team in Asia with a focus on crypto derivatives, DeFi, market microstructure, and protocol analysis. Shaurya holds over $1,000 in BTC, ETH, SOL, AVAX, SUSHI, CRV, NEAR, YFI, YFII, SHIB, DOGE, USDT, USDC, BNB, MANA, MLN, LINK, XMR, ALGO, VET, CAKE, AAVE, COMP, ROOK, TRX, SNX, RUNE, FTM, ZIL, KSM, ENJ, CKB, JOE, GHST, PERP, BTRFLY, OHM, BANANA, ROME, BURGER, SPIRIT, and ORCA. He provides over $1,000 to liquidity pools on Compound, Curve, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, BurgerSwap, Orca, AnySwap, SpiritSwap, Rook Protocol, Yearn Finance, Synthetix, Harvest, Redacted Cartel, OlympusDAO, Rome, Trader Joe, and SUN.
