Bitcoin Forum

Crypto exchange KuCoin has worked out who hacked its cryptocurrency exchange for $281 million.

CEO Johnny Lyu tweeted today that, "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."

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The hack took place on September 26. KuCoin said that the hackers used a leaked private key to access the exchange's wallets. KuCoin says that it has enough money in the bank to cover all of its losses.

After the hack, crypto projects worked to freeze or render useless most of the assets. Many teams updated their blockchain to make this happen. Lyu said that $204 million worth of cryptocurrency, or 72% of the total hack, is "out of the control of the suspicious addresses."

https://decrypt.co/43806/kucoin-has-found-the-hackers-who-stole-281-million

It's a bit of an overstatement. They found out the addresses to which the coins were transfered and made them public so that the coin teams and exchanges can block them.

They don't know who owns the addresses and about 30% of the hacked coins still was not blocked. Even if the hackers manage to liquidate 10% it's still a lot of money for them.

Also, we don't know if the 30% is really what they control. It may be more. I wouldn't trust the news coming from a hacked exchange 100%.

Yeah, I think there's some new news here, but it's pretty click baity and not actually accurate. Thanks for the update anyway. Also 30% of $200M is still quite a bit of change.

This is wonderful news but I am not surprised they find the hacker because I have already make some research about the hacker token movement and I find that he moved some of the token to Okex and Binance exchange which is a centralized exchange.
I think that's where they nab the hacker.
According to whales alert the hacker wallet address is 0xeb31973e0febf3e3d7058234a5ebbae1ab4b8c23 (https://whale-alert.io/transaction/ethereum/69bea84a21d5e7f59ffd4a6282ee8e8ae3cbd3d56f1107532a1f06c4690b3c12) which it sent CHR token to 0xa53605cAe63A95772582A084e5d22C230a62c0d4 (https://ethplorer.io/tx/0x5cc71de27a6525018690a7dc5234cedba9870871ab7e9236fbb7a139225e8347) the CHR was later moved to 0x7e5084905bb718A9b0bb58247a441773e3b01D51 (https://ethplorer.io/tx/0x9b9868e0d3cccf36927a71d75752c59d66b9afac6f70549a7d014fc3ff946733) to 0x0E8D3ae1535bed127876065a69Ad2C64286b019C (https://ethplorer.io/tx/0x6b1ae41c7b76b858bb2b46351136137407a97daaa00d1874cc7e5cad3ca233d6) and then to Binance wallet (https://ethplorer.io/tx/0x671b2da75600d401c06030689930d3f69651bec3e0e4ad9a67fd66c76e7a1aac)

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For token sent to Okex are moved as below
Hacker wallet : https://ethplorer.io/address/0xeb31973e0febf3e3d7058234a5ebbae1ab4b8c23?from=search#pageSize=25&transfers=2
Puppet wallet 1 :  https://ethplorer.io/address/0xa76088c1a9a4bbb2ab39a378fd4b9fb70c22b797#pageSize=25&transfers=2
Puppet wallet 2 :  https://ethplorer.io/address/0xa53605cae63a95772582a084e5d22c230a62c0d4#pageSize=25
Puppet wallet 3 : https://ethplorer.io/address/0x7e5084905bb718a9b0bb58247a441773e3b01d51#pageSize=25
Final wallet used to sent to Okex 
https://ethplorer.io/address/0x2dd51a3caa01d2be7e8f42bf201b32147e5a6504#pageSize=25
https://ethplorer.io/address/0x413b13fd1653975ce88ba071b4f889207c39cac4#pageSize=25
https://ethplorer.io/address/0xfa68bffa80690cd1db9179b57a5fd52e17134838#pageSize=25

Come on mate, don't just copy-paste the article. You even included the ad to download their mobile app.

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Pretty disappointed with the announcement. I guess we will just have to wait until the arrest has been made before they disclose more details. It would have been better if it was announced after the suspects were already arrested.

Every single crypto exchange was hacked or will be hacked in near future. Even binance/bitfinex was hacked.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-08/crypto-exchange-giant-binance-reports-a-hack-of-7-000-bitcoin
https://www.coindesk.com/bitfinex-hack-bitcoin-moving

I always tread kucoin as second/third best crypto exchange. Even though volume was not representing it. Now they showed class. They limit losses from 280 mln to 80 mln at max, they were insured (so this 80 mln will most likely not even hit kucoin, they will only pay bigger fees in insurance company) and now we see that they will most likely catch hacker.



this is what surprises me the most. Most often, the police in such a situation forbid informing the public in order not to make it easier for the criminal (not to warn him that his days in freedom are numbered, so that he would not try to run away/hide).

You block and copy all the content including the ads dude 😂.
But nevermind.

Finally, the insurance company that covers Kucoin loss can sleep comfortly 😂

If kucoin can bounce back from this case, it can be a good portfolio for them to attract more investor. Because they have competence to solve this big case.

Archived (https://archive.is/EQFPj) your thread. Can you explain briefly about below quote?

What doesn't mean Decrypt token and decrypt apps? Please explain to us how it's related to the KuCoin hacking issue? I am expecting an answer from you.

No doubts it's good news that KuCoin has found the hacker and going to take action against him/her. Directly copy-paste from a website and just post with a link is very bad behavior. You are just filling your weekly quota in a shortcut.

There is no perfect crime, investigations always come to light. Frauds are committed by an inner vulnerability in most cases. It is honestly good news that most of the affected projects could act in time preventing the hacker from getting away with it. It's a shame that the 3rd anniversary was marred by this fatal event.

I love KuCoin because it was the first exchange that I learned how to exchange tokens for other cryptos. Not everything is bad from here comes a learning and desire to improve the security system of KuCoin. Applause to CEO Johnny Lyu and the entire KuCoin team.

Good news now lets hope they are persecuted to the full extent of the law.

Did Johnny Lyu mean this guy?  ;D

https://i.imgur.com/CeaLb11.png

https://twitter.com/DeFIKING8/status/1312361093579202564

If I'm Johnny though, I will keep the info silent and not let the public know about it until they really arrested the person/group behind the attack. Let them feel comfortable sitting with their laptop and dumping it and when they least expected, police or Interpol can sweep and arrest those cyber criminals.

It's an ad and part of the article if you'll go through the website. He probably forgot to delete it when he pasted it here.

I'll do that the same of keeping it low profile first. Until everything has been solved and the culprit is on the custody, that's the time to celebrate and spread it on the news that they've arrested him with sufficient evidence.

$204 million worth of cryptocurrency, or 72% of the total hack, is "out of the control of the suspicious addresses?
Where it goes? Probably they are converting it already into fiat money and keep on the bank.

Sorry but KuCoin has no chance to know the hackers, they got the address and that's all its left. If I am the founder, I have to let go, it makes no sense to keep tracking into addresses because in the end, we got nothing but just these blockchain records.

At first, I thought they really found the individuals or the hackers.
But they only traced the addresses and froze or made useless those tokens involved.
One mistake from these hackers is if they did their KYC to those exchanges where they sent their stolen coins.
But are they going to disclose the names, if in case they truly caught those people involved?

Looks like the best in the business running the business  :P, they could not even identify a leaked private key in which their coins are held in the exchange. No matter how much money they have as reserves and if the statement is true then the so called hacker could get out without any legal implications as he used a leaked private key.

Have to check on how the site was hacked as they need to be stupid to hold the funds in a wallet where the private key was leaked as per your statement.

I wonder how it was leaked? Inside job? That means their security is not so tight considering they are holding billions of dollars of assets. This will be their lesson to maybe upgrade their security protocol or add more security layer on their hot wallets as well as their cold storage.

This is sparking uninvited controversy, another conspiracy theory. But, well, sometimes the competition gets dirty. Who knows, right? ;D


I guess they are more concerned with keeping their users at ease. They need to give significant updates every now and then. True or not, they really need to show some considerable results, some progress achieved from their investigation to somehow pacify their restless clients.  

At the end of the day, this is a hollow development unless and until the culprit gets arrested and the stolen funds recovered.

Baofeng, that photo is funny hehe. CZ is killing the competition with all methods available.

This could be another strategy to force the hackers to panic and commit mistakes that will reveal their identity or maybe I've watched too many movies. Bluff or not, Johnny will become a laughing stock if the hackers managed to flee.

How? I'm not a lawyer but does having access to a private key legally allows you to take money that is not yours? I doubt that. 

Yeah thats so interesting,hacker stole only bitcoins and Erc-20 based based token i,e bitcoin,etherium etc. I think this is due to high price of these tokens.
As mention by Kucoin
""KuCoin said it detected the hack after observing "some
large withdrawals" from its hot wallets on September 26.

The company said it started a security audit and discovered the missing funds. KuCoin said the hacker managed to steal Bitcoin assets, ERC-20-based tokens, along with other types of tokens.

Currently, the loss is estimated at a minimal $150 million, based on an Etherium address where users tracked some of the stolen funds.

You got a point here but what I am seeing the reason why KuCoin team or their CEO is publishing these kinds of statement is to make their users feel more positive in despite of the huge losses of the exchanges, and even they guaranteed that no users will get affected or they will make refund for those affected users.
If you are still a user of their exchange, you are still afraid and your balls may still shake. So, these kinds of statement make them relieved for a while even we can't guarantee if those are true.

not until the hacker has been bring behind bars then this news still nothing.

And Mind the next time you COPY PASTE the topic,Please do not Include the advertising or downloading their Apps,because this comes to be a referring .

Looking forward what will be the outcome of this hacking because this is really important in our time now how to track the hackers.

Kucoin made the great work and it took them a couple of weeks. In comparison Bitfinex couldn't recover 120,000 Bitcoin stolen in 2016. I'm interested if Kucoin will be able to get all $281M back?

This is just the beginning, they only track the address and not the person itself. Unless the hacker has passed his documents to exchanges for KYC. But criminals are too clever, I will not be surprised if he just used fake documents here.

So it might take years to pursue this criminals and it will be difficult to arrest them if they stay on some rogue nation that does not cooperate with Interpol or Western authorities.

How they found him? Is he should to return everything now?

Of course, they would easily nab the hacker with that. Moving the assets to those exchanges was the slip we all hoped for and if it's a verified account then it's easier nailing the suspect as the KYC documents to the account used will be traced to them. Initially, I thought the hacker was smarter by dumping on Dex. Good a thing something gave them away. And for those of us here who readily submit personal data as KYC doc for bounties and airdrops, you can now see the danger you expose yourselves to if a project team eventually exits a scam? The hacker could even have used such a document for verification on those exchanges and the real owners would be in danger now. Be wise, people.

Even if they found the hackers,the lawsuit will take years and the stolen funds might never be recovered.
This seems more like a PR move,rather than actual good news for the Kucoin investors,who have lost their coins.
By the way,is this forum post some kind of advertisement?What is this Decrypt app?If you want to promote a Crypto news app,you could post a forum thread in a more suitable sub-forum.
The crypto industry is still at a very early stage and hacks and scams are still a big problem,but I think that crypto trading platforms will become more and more secure,year after year.
 

Then this is something to follow because until they really catch the hackers people in crypto will still prevent from using their service and also think twice before using exchange.
hacking is something that happening for many years now but still even the Biggest exchange becomes a victim.
it doesn't need the funds must be recover instantly because the main thing here is that Hackers must be punished so others will think again if they will follow this strategy or will stop with their monkey businesses.

This news is quite good for the users of KuCoin. At least right now, the case has progressed. The KuCoin confirmed that they have substantial evidence, and not all exchanges can cover all of its losses. I think it's favorable to all and expect that many would trust KuCoins after this tragedy. Hoping all exchanges can do the same when they got hacked.

CEO Johnny Lyu gave updates regarding the hackers who stole $ 281M, only to appease KuCoin investors who were affected by the incident.
By providing a statement on twitter about the development of the hack case, as a way to make investors believe that their funds are safe.
In fact,KuCoin doesn't know the identity of the hacker who managed to steal from KuCoin. So for me, this news has not shown any significant
development, it's only limited to knowing the hacker's address. Hopefully in the near future, KuCoin can immediately get the hacker's identity.

We are hopeful to see it by then but that didn't seem so easy to track them down and paid their doings. We can't also underestimate these hackers coz they are probably on the goal to keep them untraceable to the authorities. But the problem is, the closer it gets to know who are they, the closer also the funds gone forever.
The hotness of this hacking sentiment will soon to rotten and forgotten by many, and I believe that KuCoin owner will recover their losses.

Any new development on this topic? If they actually manages to get hold of the hackers, then it will be an exception. We had dozens (if not hundreds) of exchange hacks since 2014 and not even once the actual perpetrators were captured and the stolen funds were recovered. I just hope that this time they manage to get hold of the thieves and make an example out of them. Even if they manage to recover a part of the funds, it is going to be huge.

here are the latest articles I could find in the last 24 hours. I haven't read them yet but since you are looking for latest updates you might be interested in it.

https://news.bitcoin.com/kucoin-ceo-says-exchange-hack-suspects-found-204-million-recovered/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/kucoin-ceo-claims-hacking-suspects-identified
https://www.coindesk.com/kucoin-ceo-says-perpetrators-of-281m-hack-identified-authorities-on-the-case

The headline from Decrypt was a clickbait indeed. I thought that they've revealed the names of the hackers who stole more than $150 million worth of crypto on KuCoin. To be honest, I'm a bit pissed off. They only traced the addresses, but never revealed the names of the hackers in public? I don't know why though.

Maybe they only knew the addresses they've traced, but never knew the real identity of these hackers? If they indeed "identified" the hackers by their names and photos, they just simply mention them in public so that everybody could help trace their whereabouts.

In russian press, it is mentioned, that this hacker was one of Kucoin employees (not metioned, current or former).
If this true, theb finding him will be just a matter of time. The number of suspects are greatly narrowed.

I believe they only published this to reassure their subscribers that they can still be trusted. Even though they had a security beach, they were able to narrow the hackers down meaning that they have a good cyber team.
Nevertheless, their reputation have been dented and by so doing they would loose a lot of trust from customers.
That amount that was hacked out of their system was really huge... Really careless of them though...

Well, as I see here, --the hacker is quite dumb because of the reason moving his hacked crypto to the centralized exchange which the hacker thought he will never get identified. A good thing to the Kucoin exchange, the hacker knows how to hack but I think hacker did not know how crypto will work and the possibility of being traced once you will link to the centralized exchange. Users now of that exchange are happy to see that Kucoin now is back operation. I hope Kucoin will learn from this mistake and will n0ot repeat in the future.

The main difference is bitcoin is decentralized while the rest of the coins and tokens does not follow the same principle even though they claim decentralized :P. Even in this instance the website has not revealed any names that could identify the hacker and if they got all the details then why the delay in publicly telling his name and expose him.

I hope that they can find the genuine hacker at put it in prison so they cannot hack any wallet anymore, a hacker will remain a hacker knowing that they can easily
get a free money to it.

$281 million is a very huge money especially if it was being hack by a single person only so it will be very helpful if they can be put them in prison one by one so we can
feel safe to our money in any wallet.

Investigations take time. I provided information to the FBI about some scammers. We are two years into it still. If they moved the coins to Binance, IPs will be tracked quite easily. Binance didn't even require a warrant to give info the FBI. All they required was official letterhead and an official fbi.gov email address.  If they did ID the hackers, you think they're going to make those names public before they've been arrested by the proper authorities?

Hackers generally enrage me, the most unpleasant thing is that they are everywhere. It is also very unpleasant that they are really difficult to calculate unless they make a mistake in their operation, as in the news where a hacker threatened his victims with a SIM card that was registered in his name. I think we need to pay more attention to security and countering hackers  >:(

Probably they just making fun of the situation and inserting CZ is comedy gold.  ;D


Yes, CZ will always be in the middle of discussion, and perhaps they are trolling Johnny with CZ's images here. But I doubt CZ has something to do with it, in fact he is helping in blocking the scammers addresses in Binance.

I agree, and I saw your thread about OP earlier today.

I'm glad OP posted some news about the hack, even if it was a straight copy/paste including that stupid advertisement.  Kucoin is the only exchange I use anymore, and I'm very interested to see if this is going to impact them in a significant manner--it doesn't seem like it will, but who knows.

Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it?  I don't know how many of these exchange hackers have been caught and prosecuted by law enforcement, but I'm guessing the number is not far from zero.  On the other hand, I can't imagine law enforcement wouldn't at least put in an effort to catch someone who stole an amount this large. 

Its funny but I doubt CZ has to do with it. Can they get the hacked tokens back after they identify the perpetrator?
I just hope the exchange will be back sooner. It would be good if they do. There is nothing much I would do right now than to buy KCS since its cheaper today, I tried registering to the exchange but they disabled the deposit to USDT.

Obviously, CZ is not involved, those people are just using his name. Well if there is a name behind those addresses then they can track him down and get arrested.


They are already back as per their latest post here,

https://www.kucoin.com/news/en-the-latest-updates-about-the-kucoin-security-incident


So it's a go for USDT.

I just read an article where they comes with a statistics the performance of the top exchanged own cryptocurrencies by market cap. And the recent hack of KuCoin has unquestionably influenced KuCoin Shares (KCS) as it's displayed right now on the market where rest of other exchanges profitable with their native token.

It's good news I hope they can out the hackers in jail so to set example on those who wants to hack exchanges in the future, the best news is traders are not going to lose their coins as Kucoin already stated they they have enough money to cover the losses, now traders confidence on Kucoin will go back, this is a good evidence that when it comes to trading our coin go for the top exchange in the market to insured your coin against future hacks, but I hope these hacking will stop.

These hackers exercised no patience. ::)

I don't know much about Tornado Cash (obviously an ETH mixer) but it definitely doesn't have the liquidity for that much ETH. I'll almost feel bad for these guys if they're dumb enough to send it to exchanges now, and I really feel bad for the other users of Tornado Cash.

Third party services are going to be looking at those depositors with a fine-tooth comb.

In a hurry to get caught. Some hackers like the ones who hacked bitfinex took years before they bother to make a transcation but were still monitored. The wallets are sure being traced. If they send it to an exchange, its truly going to be frozen. $281M is not going to be easy to liquidate without an alert.

If they've managed to hack Kucoin, they must be good at covering their tracks too. Won't they get away with the Wasabi?

Probably it's their first job and they need to split the money, having lost quite a huge chunk of what they could've gotten their hand on now they are eager to split the money and be done with it. But I doubt they will simply send all that ETH to an exchange and then get fiat. Maybe they are testing the waters to see how much attention there is still on them, maybe it's just the first step and they plan to switch it again through tokens or it could be possible they're are thinking of extracting small amounts of those one at a time while the people are concentrating on the large sums.


Well, they say that criminals make stupid mistakes, that's why they get caught but in this case, it would really surprising, after all, they were smart enough to hack an exchange, they know how those operate, it would be as stupid as a thief getting himself locked in the vault he tried to break in.

But all this also means that the articles who claimed they found the hackers and the police know their whereabouts and identities were really misleading.