PRESS RELEASE. Solama, a new meme coin developed on the Solana network, will soon get listed on one more centralized crypto exchange: HTX (formerly known as Huobi Global). The announcement was made on March 18, 2024, on Solama’s official X (Twitter) account. Growth Has No Boundaries Solama, one of the most promising Solana-based meme coins […]
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Cryptocurrency exchange HTX, previously known as Huobi Global, announced that it will fully compensate users for the losses incurred in a $13.6 million hack on Nov. 22 and intends to restore withdrawal and deposit services within 24 hours, according to a press release.
The announcement follows a significant security breach on Nov. 22 that led to the loss of funds from its hot wallets, causing the exchange to suspend deposits and withdrawals.
According to HTX’s official statement, the funds lost during this incident constitute only a minor fraction of the platform’s total capital. This assurance is part of the exchange’s commitment to guaranteeing 100% safety of user funds.
HTX also confirmed that its normal operations remain unaffected.
This hacking incident is part of a larger orchestrated attack against the HTX Eco (HECO) Chain bridge, which also involved Tron (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT). Notably, all these entities have links to or are under the de-facto control of Chinese blockchain entrepreneur Justin Sun.
HTX has assured users that it remains committed to its primary responsibility to protect user assets and information. The platform said it plans to implement all necessary measures to prevent such security breaches in the future.
The latest incident marks the fourth hack in the past two months targeting HTX and entities associated with Justin Sun. The most significant was the $100 million Poloniex exploit on Nov. 10, reportedly due to a private key compromise.
Justin Sun has commented on the situation, stating that investigations are ongoing into the specific reasons behind the hacker attack. He assured that service resumption would follow the completion of these investigations.
Meanwhile, a $10 million white hat bounty remains open for the return of the stolen funds in the Poloniex exploit.
As the crypto world reels from these security breaches, HTX’s pledge to fully compensate affected users reflects a growing trend among exchanges to prioritize user trust and security in the face of increasing digital threats.
The HTX and the HECO Chain have been hacked again with reports suggesting between $85 million and $100 million in losses.
The crypto exchange HTX (previously known as Huobi) and the HECO chain have been hacked. On-chain security alerts platform Cyvers Alerts reported the news, stating that a suspicious address received about $85 million in multiple suspicious transactions from the HECO chain bridge, noting that the first transaction was 10,145 ETH. Cyvers Alerts founder and CTO Meir Dolev added that the total value of the transactions is $100 million.
We are detecting multiple suspicious transactions on @HTX_Global hot wallets and on @HECO_Chain bridge that were probably executed by the same entity, total value of $100M.
— Meir Dolev (@Meir_Dv) November 22, 2023
HTX advisor Justin Sun took to X to confirm the attack. In the post, Sun confirmed the attack, promising that all HTX funds are secure and adding that the “community can rest assured.” Sun added that all deposits and withdrawals on the platform are temporarily suspended until investigation is complete.
Blockchain security platform PeckShield initially posted a “suspicious huge withdrawal of 10,145 ETH, about $19 million. In a subsequent post, the platform noted that the total amount stolen was $86.6 million in ETH, LINK, TUSD, USDC, SUNI, SHIB, HBTC, and USDT. The largest was 42 million USDT.
The recent HECO Chain hack is the second hack this year. In September, HTX lost nearly $8 million to hackers who successfully stole 5,000 ETH from the company. At the time, Sun also quickly assured in an X post that HTX has covered the losses and resolved all related issues. At the time, Sun said it was a small amount in comparison to the $3 billion held by users of the HTX platform. He added that the amount is equivalent to only two weeks of revenue.
Sun also noted that HTX was willing to offer 5% of the amount ($400,000) to the hacker as a white hat reward if they returned the funds within seven days. Adding that HTX will hire the person as a white hat advisor. Days later, Sun announced that the hacker “fully returned all funds.” He also added that HTX paid the hacker “a white hat bonus of 250 ETH,” equivalent to $506,000 at current rates.
Unfortunately, Justin Sun’s crypto exchange Poloniex was also recently hacked. On November 10, Poloniex lost more than $126 million in a hack, as confirmed by transactions on the Ethereum blockchain explorer Etherscan. Peckershield revealed Etherscan transactions showing transfers from the “Poloniex 4” wallet to a wallet controlled by the hacker. Coins lost include ETH, TRON, USDT, TUSD, PEPE, SHIB, and FLOKI. In addition, blockchain data from crypto intelligence platform Arkham Intelligence shows that the hackers also made away with 865 Bitcoins and more than 288 million TRX. Poloniex suspended withdrawals when it happened.
Sun offered the hacker a 5% white hat bounty on the day, allowing 7 days to return the funds.
According to an official statement from the company, a few days after a few days, deposits and withdrawal services are restored. Nonetheless, Sun has raised the reward for the hack to $10 million, and threatened to involve law enforcement authorities if the hacker does not return the funds by November 25.
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Hours after the crypto exchange HTX (rebranded from Huobi) reported a hack that resulted in a loss of $8 million, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao offered the help of the exchange’s security team in investigating the attack.
Timely intervention is key to tracking down and retrieving stolen cryptocurrencies, as hackers attempt to hide their tracks using mixers or converting the loot to privacy tokens. On Sept. 24, blockchain analytics platform Cyvers identified a hack that drained 5,000 Ether (ETH) from one of HTX’s hot wallets.
Red CodeYesterday, our ML-powered system detected a suspicious transaction involving @HuobiGlobal and @HTX_Global.
Despite our attempts to reach out, we received no response. An EOA received 5K $ETH $7.9M from @HuobiGlobal‘s hot wallet.This morning, we spotted… pic.twitter.com/3oqHhAVi8P
— Cyvers Alerts (@CyversAlerts) September 25, 2023
To minimize the damage, HTX proactively offered 5% of the drained funds as a “white-hat bonus,” which would amount to nearly $400,000. However, the hacker has been provided with seven days to comply. HTX communicated the offer in Mandarin (Chinese), as shown in the screenshot below.
On a lighter note, CZ joked about the resemblance of the newly rebranded HTX with Sam Bankman-Fried’s infamous crypto exchange, FTX. However, the loss of funds in both exchange are incomparable, given that HTX was hacked and FTX was an alleged scam.
Responding to a tweet from Tron founder Justin Sun, who also serves as an adviser t HTX, CZ appointed Binance’s security team to help track the stolen funds. Additionally, Sun confirmed that HTX will cover all losses for its users. He added:
“$8 million represents a relatively small sum in comparison to the $3 billion worth of assets held by our users. It also amounts to just two weeks’ revenue for the HTX platform.”
HTX also implemented real-time monitoring mechanisms to prevent such losses. While Sun denies owning a major stake in HTX, he committed to conducting several live streams — in English and Chinese — to discuss exchange security.
Binance did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment about the ongoing HTX hack investigations.
Related: CoinEx hack: Compromised private keys led to $70M theft
Just a day before the HTX hack, Decentralized peer-to-peer network Mixin Network lost nearly $200 million in a hack involving the compromise of the database of a third-party cloud service provider.
[Announcement] In the early morning of September 23, 2023 Hong Kong time, the database of Mixin Network’s cloud service provider was attacked by hackers, resulting in the loss of some assets on the mainnet. We have contacted Google and blockchain security company @SlowMist_Team…
— Mixin Kernel (@MixinKernel) September 25, 2023
An independent investigation from Web3 SaaS analytics platform 0xScope revealed the hacker’s historical relationship with Mixin Network. In 2022, an address linked to the hacker received 5 ETH from Mixin and was deposited into Binance later.
Deposits and withdrawals on Mixin Network will recommence “once the vulnerabilities are confirmed and fixed.” The plans to recover the lost assets for users were not announced immediately.
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HTX has announced that the hacker has until October 2, 2023, to return the funds.
The HTX crypto exchange, formerly known as Huobi, has lost a total of $7.9 million to hackers in a September 24 attack. The amount lost in the HTX hack was first noted by a blockchain analytics platform Cyvers.
That was before the report was later confirmed by Tron founder and HTX advisor Justin Sun on Monday. Taking to his X (formerly Twitter) account, Sun wrote:
“HTX has suffered a loss of 5,000 ETH due to a hacker attack.”
However, he was also quick to put to bed all customer fears concerning their assets. Sun noted that “HTX has fully covered the losses incurred from the attack and has successfully resolved all related issues.”
Meanwhile, it appears that the exchange has already figured out who the attacker. It could become clear from a message posted by a known Huobi hot wallet the morning after the attack. The wallet is owned by blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence, which is listed on a Huobi support page as belonging to it.
Per the message, the exchange is willing to take only 95% of the amount stolen, while the hacker may keep the remaining 5% as a reward for their troubles.
The offer, though, is time-bound. HTX exchange has announced that the hacker has until October 2, 2023, to return the funds. The exchange noted that a failure to return the fund would result in the hacker facing the full wrath of the law. The statement says in part:
“If you do not return the funds by the deadline, we will request judicial intervention.”
Without a doubt, 2023 has been quite a rollercoaster year so far, at least for many crypto exchanges. First, there is the battle of compliance that they constantly face with regulators. Then, they also have to deal with endless attacks from relentless bad actors.
These attacks have been particularly impactful on exchanges this year, leading to the loss of a sizeable amount of crypto assets. And HTX’s recent attack easily adds to the list.
To put the above statement into perspective, the highly dreaded North Korean-affiliated Lazarus group alone has amassed no less than $40 million in Bitcoin from their criminal escapades over the year.
Nonetheless, users continue to raise concerns as to whether exchanges even do enough to ensure that unfortunate incidents such as this do not repeat themselves in the future.
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Crypto exchange Huobi rebranded to HTX to celebrate its tenth anniversary, according to a Sept. 13 statement from the platform.
Part of the statement reads:
“‘H’ stands for Huobi, ‘T’ represents TRON with a commitment to being all in TRON, and ‘X’ stands for the exchange. Looking at HTX through the combination of HT and X, HT represents the native token of the platform while X symbolizes the exchange. Hence, HTX is an exchange with its native token of HT…There is also a brand new slogan – ‘HTX, Just Trade It.’”
The exchange’s official English-language X (formerly Twitter) account has undergone the name change, with several of its products now reflecting this updated name.
HTX added that its “new mission is to build a metaverse free port with a vision to achieve financial freedom for 8 billion people on earth.”
Meanwhile, some market observers have pointed out similarities between Huobi’s new name and the now-defunct FTX crypto exchange. Additionally, some have drawn comparisons to the placeholder name previously used by the crypto claims trading platform OPNX, “GTX.”
Last month, HTX saw its spot market share jump to its highest point since October 2021 after its trading volume surged by 46.5% to $28.9 billion. The increase is more notable, considering the platform faced scrutiny about its stablecoin reserves and denied any reports that its executives were arrested in China.
The post Huobi rebrands to HTX, the ‘Huobi Tron Exchange’ in celebration of tenth anniversary appeared first on CryptoSlate.