Global crypto exchange CoinEx was hacked on Tuesday, the firm confirmed. Perpetrators drained four of the exchange’s hot wallets of nearly $28 million in ETH, TRON, and Polygon’s MATIC.
CoinEx Loses $28 Million In Hack
CoinEx may have lost $28 million after a hack on its hot wallets.
CoinEx saw unusually enormous outflows to an address with no previous history, leading security whizzes to suspect the exchange had suffered a security breach. At around 1:21 p.m. UTC on Tuesday, a CoinEx hot wallet moved roughly 4,947 Ether, worth $7.9 million at the time, to Ethereum address 0x8bf8cd7F001D0584F98F53a3d82e.
The CoinEx wallet further transferred $8.5M Tron and $291K in Polygon, among other tokens, to the same account. Web3 security firm, Cyvers Alert estimates the total losses to be nearly $28 million.
CoinEx confirmed the hack in a post on X (formerly Twitter), revealing they had immediately set up a special investigative team to investigate the issue. The digital currency exchange additionally noted that the affected funds were just a small portion of its total assets. CoinEx assured customers that it would cover the losses out of its pocket, despite the exchange’s ether reserves now being “basically zero”.
All deposits and withdrawals are temporarily disabled and will be restarted after a thorough review, CoinEx stated.
It’s important to note that this is not the first time CoinEX has fallen victim to an exploit. The exchange was attacked in 2014, resulting in the loss of all the Bitcoins in its possession.
In recent years, a series of multimillion-dollar hacks has rattled investor confidence in crypto markets and prompted many investors to become increasingly wary of where they store their holdings. The largest attack was on Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge, which experienced a $625 million loss last year. Earlier this year, Singapore-based exchange Bitrue was exploited for $23 million.
