Cryptopia: hackers collected more than 2 million dollars via decentralized exchange

Hackers who, earlier this year, violated Cryptopia's New Zealand-based cryptocurrency trade, have already managed to cash more than $ 3.2 million through major cryptographic exchanges, including 2 million via decentralized EtherDelta exchange.

According to data shared by Elementus, hackers have also cashed significant amounts via Huobi, Binance and Bitbox, among other exchanges. These probably have KYC controls in place for such large amounts, which means that it may be possible to identify them.

Update of Cryptopia
Since this morning, hackers have sold $ 3.2 million in chips, most of which was donated to Etherdelta. pic.twitter.com/QVbb8mSszX

– Elementus (@elementus_io) February 4, 2019

As for the funds cashed via EtherDelta, they will probably not be found in the future because EtherDelta is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that does not require KYC checks or anti-money laundering (AML) . As covered, its founder was accused of operating an unregistered security exchange.

New Zealand police revealed that piracy of the encryption exchange was a "complex situation", while noting that they took the investigation "very seriously". However, the authorities were unable to predict the length of the investigation.

The cryptopia hack

Cryptopia hacking was the first major security breach in 2019 in the crypto space. According to the exchange, the hacking took place on January 14 and although the exchange initially claimed that it was the subject of an unexpected maintenance, it was quickly revealed that he had been hacked.

An investigation by Elementus initially revealed that piracy was unusual. Their investigation only used Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens, and revealed that the attack was of an unusual magnitude and magnitude, with the team claiming that 76,000 portfolios were perforated, which means that thousands of private keys have been obtained.

The researchers pointed out that these attacks usually resulted in the violation of a single wallet and that "by the time the theft is made public, the funds are gone." In this case, however, there was a "flagrant lack of urgency". as the attack lasted weeks. A plausible explanation that they found was that Cryptopia "no longer had access to their own portfolios".

Some members of the cryptocurrency community claimed that it was internal work, because for some, it is plausible that Cryptopia could not stop the attack after realizing that the one of his employees was behind it.

Keep an eye on this page for updates on the situation: https://t.co/TWZkinsUet pic.twitter.com/1c5ezYq27u

– Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) January 28, 2019

Although this is only speculation and the investigation is ongoing, users have crossed paths to try to recover the funds they had deposited on Cryptopia.