Hacking of Crypto.com generates millionaire losses of ETH, BTC and other cryptos

The exchange platform in development of being direct competition of Binance has made a very big stumble

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Jan 20, 20227 min de lectura

C rypto.com in recent months has given much to talk about the operation of its platform, due to the fact that the accelerated advertising system of the exchange application has been noticed.

This has given it more value in the market and users were satisfied with the improvements obtained in their trusted exchange, despite the fact that criticism against the "Fortune favors the brave" advertising was heard.

Read More: Rival Binace Exchange Hires Matt Damon for Advertising.

At this time, a great drop in reliability was seen in this network, since the platform canceled any possibility of withdrawal by its users on Monday, due to suspicious activities. If you want to know more, slide!

First act: Crypto.com cancels the option to withdraw assets

On Monday, January 17, users of the cryptocurrency exchange platform declared the disappearance of between 2 or 4 ETH from various wallets, despite the fact that the security of the exchange worked normally.

The platform was not aware of the loss of assets until users began to invade it with doubts. The action pressured Crypto.com to make an announcement on its Twitter account.

It was a short t weet and with the necessary information to "calm down" the community that follows this application, but in its attempt to sound subtle, it caused the internet to start making theories, while security companies added more fuel to the fire.

The most talked about phrases in said announcement are "small number of users have registered suspicious activities" and "funds are safe". Apart from reporting the cancellation of withdrawals with no resume time.

The pause of asset movement activities was stopped for a period of 14 hours in total.

Recommendations given to its users

Crypto.com, after its quick announcement on its social network, recommended its users to log out and log back in to their devices, where they have the platform application, and then restore the two-factor authentication (2FA).

And although they also advised their customers to contact user support, if they had any problems, even after performing the steps above, the answers to their questions were not answered.

Which put a lot more stress on the lost ethers, and on the company that had been thriving since late last year.

In the middle of 5:00 p.m. on the same day, Monday, operations were resumed, calming the waters a bit. Users stated that the lost money was returned to their wallets.

Tweet in response to Crypto.com ad

Although there were multiple responses to the notice of cancellation of operations by the exchange platform, the one that most surprised the cryptocurrency community was the publication of the Co-founder of the DOGE coin.

Billy Markus reported that he had obtained something suspicious from several Ethereum wallets, which were associated with the Crypto.com exchange.

The claims were there, and while users and other individuals familiar with the cryptocurrency market spoke about the subject at hand, Crypto.com remained silent.

PeckShield enters the scene

When things were thought to be calm (albeit awaiting answers), security research firm PeckShield confirmed that Crypto.com had reported a loss of 4,600 ETH in trading volume on Monday.

These ethers are equivalent to nothing more and nothing less than a figure of USD$15 million. He then went on to mitigate the peace with a comment about losses being "definitely worse" than that figure.

He also gave the name of the platform where half of the stolen ETH assets were sent; Tornado Cash is the address they got from investigating.

This completely anonymous platform is used to mix digital assets, that is, the culprits of the disappearance of this large number of assets are money laundering.

In these applications there seems to be no way to track anything beyond the information currently held. Which clearly implies that Crypto.com did not recover the money.

How is it possible for users to get their money back?

Given what PeckShield said, the silence of the CEO of Crypto.com, Kris Marszalek, was more present. Said wait took a couple of hours, but Marszalek seemed to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to PeckShield.

"No funds from our users were compromised," Kris said, as the community racked up other ideas.

And the question became widespread, "how is it possible for users to get their money back?" If the stolen money could not be recovered.

The only immediate solution they could have taken to mitigate even more damage is to fill the affected accounts with money from Crypto.com itself.

Although this was not confirmed in previous days, it was the most consistent and accepted assumption by the crypto community.

Scarce information for several hours

Several media outlets were waiting for a little more information on this case, but the story was paused during the investigation of the stolen $15 million.

In this story, only one type of currency was discussed in the eye of the hurricane. The ether (ETH) was the only protagonist for hours.

Media on the web like Cointelegraph or Decrypt tried to contact Crypto.com for the same reason of little information, and for 2 days they have been waiting to update their published articles.

Marszalek accepted that his company was hacked

Kris Marszalek commented that this incident served to strengthen the network of digital asset exchanges, and they were working day and night for this to lead to an improvement.

This investigative action was classified as "Autopsy" due to the disappearance of these assets. And then he made a promise to share the results at the end of the company's internal investigations.

The promise was fulfilled, and in the last hours Crypto.com confirms that it was the victim of a hack with millionaire losses. Providing a report that results in a total of 483 user accounts affected by movements of assets not controlled by them.

Also giving the explanation of why the money of its clients was returned: most of the transactions were blocked in time, and the accounts really affected had refunds.

Total published amounts of the hack

The last news sent speaks of not only several ETH taken from the wallets of Crypto.com users, but also of stolen BTC and thousands of dollars in other cryptocurrencies within the exchange platform.

Of the 483 hacked accounts, it is estimated that 4,836.26 ETH have been lost; 443.93 BTC and $66,200 in other cryptocurrencies. In its entirety, Crypto.com lost about $34.4 million in the hack.

It is not the first time that something like this has happened in the world of cryptocurrencies, exchanges are always the most desired objects in the mind of a high-scale hacker.

And the user wave in withdrawal that the platform will have will also be normal, since there was a loss of confidence on the part of the community. We hope that Crypto.com will be able to recover before the other test that remains pending.