FTX Suffers $400M Hack, Remaining Funds Moved to Cold Storage

Around $400 million worth of cryptocurrency has been hijacked from the beleaguered FTX exchange in the past few hours. After declaring bankruptcy hours earlier, the exchange said it had been hacked.

The FTX Community Chat admin sent a message to the exchange’s official Telegram group stating that the bankrupt platform had been hacked and all apps were malware.

The admin advised users to delete the app and not to visit the website or open their mobile apps as they may end up with Trojans.

Over $380 Million in User Funds Disappeared

The actual amount withdrawn from the exchange has yet to be determined as sources say it is between $380 million and $600 million.

According to Etherscan, the drainer address processed over 140 transactions and received funds from multiple FTX-linked wallets. In just two hours, the address received 83,878.63 ETH (over $105.3 million).

In addition to receiving funds, the wallet also exchanged USDT for DAI. It also transferred funds to other networks like Binance Smart Chain and Solana.

Crypto intelligence firm Arkham Intelligence has revealed that the hacker is gradually dumping all assets into the CowSwap DEX aggregator.

At press time, Arkham also said the hacker has finished dumping LINK, MATIC, AAVE, and SHIB. The hacker still owns PAXG and SNX, which may be sold later.

Meanwhile, USDT issuer Tether has blacklisted 27.5 million USDT on Solana and 3.9 million USDT on Avalanche.

Exchange hack an internal job?

With much still unknown, many believe that if this is a hack, it must be insider work. Adam Cochran Noted that the hacker had access to the “private key, website root level, and application publisher access key”.

another user Underline that the violation included an Apple publisher key violation. This allowed the “hacker” to upload malware into the FTX application. Many users are reporting that their FTX balance is now showing zero.

Many in the crypto community point out that FTX has never been hacked since it began operations. Therefore, the idea of ​​the exchange being hacked immediately after filing for bankruptcy is fishy.

FTX Move funds to cold storage

However, the embattled company’s official sources have yet to confirm the development.

FTX.US General Counsel Ryne Miller acknowledged that the exchange was investigating certain “anomalies with portfolio movements related to the consolidation of FTX balances on the exchanges.”

Miller further tweeted that the exchange had moved its funds to cold storage following the wave of “unauthorized transactions”. He said:

“Following Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Filings – FTX US and FTX [dot] com has taken precautionary measures to move all digital assets to cold storage. The process was sped up tonight – to mitigate the damage when observing unauthorized transactions.