By Mat Di Salvo
2 min read
Nearly $5 million has been drained from digital asset exchange ZB.com’s hot wallet in a likely hack.
Security firm PeckShield made the announcement Wednesday on Twitter, posting data showing that $4.8 million in over 20 cryptocurrencies, including SHIB, USDT, and MATIC, had been transferred out of the exchange on Tuesday.
The tokens were then sold on a number of decentralized exchanges for Ethereum, according to PeckShield.
ZB.com, at the time of this writing, had not confirmed whether it had been hacked. The company also didn’t immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
But the platform, which deals with over $1 billion in trades every day and calls itself “the world’s most secure digital asset exchange,” halted withdrawals on Tuesday, citing “temporary maintenance.”
“Due to the sudden failure of some core applications, it still takes time to troubleshoot the problem,” the exchange said in a Tuesday blog post. “Deposit and withdrawal services are now suspended.”
Hacks have been frequent in the crypto sphere. Billions of dollars a year are drained from experimental DeFi (decentralized finance) protocols—which have a reputation for at times weak security. But centralized exchanges are not hack-resistant.
In 2020, criminals stole $285 million in crypto from popular exchange KuCoin. The platform later said it managed to recover 84%—$239 million—of the stolen money but had to use its insurance fund to cover the remaining $45 million.
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