Criminals got access to the hot wallet of the Singaporean cryptocurrency exchange Bitrue and stole almost $23 million of cryptocurrency. This was announced in a statement by the project team.
Bitrue stated that they had to temporarily suspend all fund withdrawals due to “brief use” of the hot wallet. It is expected that withdrawals will be available on April 18 after the platform conducts additional security checks.
The exchange team noted that they were able to quickly halt all operations, preventing further withdrawal of funds by the hacker. However, 5% of the total funds held by the exchange were on the compromised wallet.
“Our other wallets remain secure and have not been compromised. We are conducting a thorough security review and will keep you informed as we progress,” said Bitrue.
Exchange management also pledged to completely recompense all users affected by the event who could be identified. The hot wallet contained such currencies as Ethereum (ETH), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Quant (QNT), Gala GALA, Holo (HOT), and Polygon (MATIC).
Previous Attacks
According to analysts, cybercriminals stole $418.5 million from cryptocurrency companies in the last quarter, with more than 95% of the losses resulting from hacking attacks and just over 4% resulting from fraudulent schemes. Decentralized finance (DeFi) remains the primary target for criminals, accounting for 99.6% of all hacks.
The largest thefts in the last quarter occurred during the breaches of Euler Finance (around $197 million) and BonqDAO (around $120 million). Additionally, more than half of the funds were stolen in March, totaling over $211 million.
Despite the new quarter just starting, cybercriminals have already carried out a series of hacks. The month began with the Sentiment protocol hack, which resulted in the theft of more than $500,000 in digital assets. Next, two exchanges, SushiSwap and Gdac, were targeted, resulting in the theft of more than $3.3 million and $13 million, respectively.
In addition, two more DeFi projects, Terraport Finance and Yearn Finance, were also targeted in these attacks, resulting in losses of $2 million and $10 million, respectively.