Liquid Bitcoin exchange hacked for $80 million

The Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid reported a breach of hot wallets. The hacker moved digital assets valued at over $80 million.

The following assets had been transferred to hacker’s following addresses (Further investigation to come):
BTC: 1Fx1bhbCwp5LU2gHxfRNiSHi1QSHwZLf7q
ETH/EWT: 0x5578840aae68682a9779623fa9e8714802b59946
TRX: TSpcue3bDfZNTP1CutrRrDxRPeEvWhuXbp
XRP: rfapBqj7rUkGju7oHTwBwhEyXgwkEM4yby

— Liquid Global Official (@Liquid_Global) August 19, 2021

The platform moves cryptocurrencies into cold storage.

“We are currently looking into the situation and will provide regular updates. In the meantime, deposits and withdrawals will be suspended,” wrote the Liquid team.

The exchange did not disclose the total value of assets moved by the attacker, but published the addresses associated with them. On-chain data show that 107.3 BTC, nearly 11 million XRP, and about 9 million TRX were sent to them. The Ethereum wallet received 14,957 ETH and ERC-20 tokens totaling $24.8 million.

The total value of funds moved to the addresses exceeded $80 million.

We are currently tracking the movement of assets and are working with other exchanges to freeze and recover the funds,” added the Liquid team.

Update:
We are currently tracing the movement of the assets and working with other exchanges to freeze and recover funds.

Attacker deposited XRP via another exchange and withdrew BTC to these 2 addresses:
12PKkwoFkXp6JtN7roWRA2gSitE6nVDds4
1JW1tcBXp1vZ6KGEirFNSXb5RgZSaL63Av

— Liquid Global Official (@Liquid_Global) August 19, 2021

Back in 2020, the exchange suffered a data breach of user data.