HTX faced a security breach resulting in losing $7.9 million worth of Ethereum (ETH). The cryptocurrency exchange formerly known as Huobi was rebranded two weeks ago. Justin Sun, the Tron founder and an advisor to HTX, confirmed the attack on Twitter. He says that “HTX has fully covered the losses incurred from the attack and has successfully resolved all related issues.”
Blockchain investigator PeckShield detected suspicious activity before the hack, identifying a transaction of 4,999 ETH leaving the exchange. The hacker’s addresses have been identified.
Justin Sun emphasized that the losses, while significant, represent a “relatively small sum.” HTX has a total of $3 billion in assets held by users. The stolen crypto amounts to just two weeks’ revenue for the HTX platform.
As of the latest data from DefiLlama, HTX holds approximately $2.7 billion in assets, a figure that has remained relatively stable since November of the previous year. Around 29.4% of these assets are in Tron’s native TRX token, while the second-largest holding is Bitcoin at 27.49%.
Recovery action
HTX is actively working to recover the lost funds and has identified the hacker’s “true identity.” They have threatened to involve law enforcement if the funds are not returned within one week. To incentivize the hacker’s cooperation, HTX has offered a 5% white-hat reward, totaling $400,000, and the possibility of hiring the hacker as a security white-hat advisor.
Additionally, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has pledged assistance from Binance’s security team in tracking the hacker’s funds where possible.
This incident follows a similar trend in the crypto space. CoinEX proposed a bug bounty program after a hack that led to the loss of an estimated $54 million in assets linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group earlier this month.
