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After losing more than $250 million worth of cryptocurrencies in a security incident on September 26, KuCoin may have found new evidence to identify those responsible for the hack.
It’s been exactly one week since Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin suffered what would be the third-largest hack in the history of crypto.
And now, the exchange claims that after a thorough investigation, it has found the suspects of the siphoned $280 million with “substantial proof at hand.”
KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu revealed this in an update today on Twitter, noting that the police and other law enforcement agents are officially involved and ready to take action with the new evidence.
A quick update since my last livestream on Sep 30.
After a thorough investigation, we have found the suspects of the 9.26 #KuCoin Security Incident with substantial proof at hand. Law enforcement officials and police are officially involved to take action.
— lyu_johnny (@lyu_johnny) October 3, 2020
$204 Million Secured
KuCoin said it has been working closely with crypto exchanges and projects to see how it can recover some of the funds.
Most of the affected cryptocurrencies in the security incident were DeFi and ERC-20 tokens.
Tether and Bitfinex alone froze $33 million worth of USDT. Other projects like Ocean Protocol, VIDT_Datalink, and Akropolis also took several measures like freezing, forking, and blacklisting to prevent the hackers from using or transferring the funds.
According to Lyu’s update, another $64 million worth of tokens has been recovered, bringing the total to $204 million.
However, members of the crypto community did not welcome the idea, especially from projects that described themselves as decentralized, since it goes against what they stand for. To some, it simply proves that the cryptocurrency industry is not yet fully ready for decentralized systems.
Using DEX To Launder Stolen Funds
Since centralized exchanges can easily freeze cryptocurrencies sent to their platform, the perpetrators of the KuCoin hack chose to launder the funds using decentralized exchanges.
Although $204 million in assets is reportedly out of control of the suspicious addresses, data from Whale Alert confirmed that millions of dollars of the stolen tokens were transferred through Uniswap, thus making the funds untouchable.
KuCoin Hard At Work
Following the incident, the exchange had to halt its services. However, according to Lyu, users can now deposit and withdraw more than 30 tokens with more to follow, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT.
The CEO noted that KuCoin would commence full operation shortly as they continue to do their best to “offset the impact” of the hack as earlier promised.
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