HTX Announces Plans to Resume Operations Hours After Hack
- HTX and other Justin Sun-owned platforms have been the victims of attacks in the last two months.
- Crypto enthusiasts have warned the crypto community to avoid using Poloniex or HTX.
- Decentralized exchange KyberSwap suffered a significant hack on Thursday.
Crypto exchange HTX has announced plans to restart deposit and withdrawal services within 24 hours. This announcement comes a day after the exchange suffered a $13.6 million hack.
The exchange shared the news in a blog post:
Huobi HTX has now properly handled this attack. Huobi HTX once again promises to fully compensate for the losses caused by this attack and 100% guarantee the safety of user funds. The amount of funds lost by Huobi HTX this time accounts for a very small amount of the total funds of the platform. The normal operation of Huobi HTX will not be affected by this. Users should rest assured.
HTX’s exchange hot wallet was hacked as part of a planned attack on the HTX Eco Chain bridge. The hack affected the wider HTX, Tron, and BitTorrent ecosystems, which are all associated with blockchain investor Justin Sun.
Hackers have repeatedly targeted Sun’s cryptocurrency enterprises in the last two months, launching at least four attacks on platforms associated with the cryptocurrency entrepreneur.
Sun acquired HTX in October 2022. At the time, the exchange was known as Huobi Global and rebranded to its new identity in September. However, since the name change, HTX has had at least two hacks. The first occurred on September 24, 2023, after an unidentified hacker stole about $8 million in cryptocurrency.
Hackers have also targeted other platforms owned by Sun, including the HTX Eco Chain (HECO) bridge and Poloniex. Hackers stole at least $100 million in cryptocurrencies from Poloniex on November 10, which many say was caused by a serious security breach. Certik, a blockchain security company, believes that a “private key compromise” was most likely the cause of the incident.
The attacks on all Sun-owned platforms have caused a loss of about $208 million. Sun has promised to cover losses from all four occurrences. However, several crypto users have advised the community to avoid using Poloniex and HTX. A few have even questioned who could have been involved in the breaches.
Given that HTX offers 100% interest on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Poloniex has been shut down for five days, one cryptocurrency analyst claimed that Sun is “clearly in big trouble.” A source from crypto security firm Hacken claims the hackers seem particularly drawn to Sun’s projects and claims that these hacks could possibly be caused by an internal compromise.
The Hacken representative said in an interview:
Most likely, the reasons are private key leakage in all cases […] These projects definitely should improve the procedure for storing sensitive information like private keys, and if there is no need for such amounts of liquidity, keep part of the funds in cold wallets.
Earlier today, the decentralized exchange KyberSwap suffered a hack of almost $50 million. The exchange announced the news on X and urged users to withdraw their funds as a safety measure.
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