Not your keys, not your Crypto – Kucoin Hacked! $150m Stolen.

[kryptqnick]

I don't what to engage in victimblaming, saying that these people who keep life savings on an exchange had in coming. It's not going to help them, and they are devastated enough already. It's terrible that the hack occurred. And while I don't think the hopes are high for the money to be returned, I hope the exchange will cover the losses and offer full compensation to victims. Binance did it, so it would be nice if this exchange follows their example.

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[Lucius]

The fact is that crypto exchanges are full of security holes, and to this should be added the human factor in the form of their employees who are sometimes responsible for hacking directly or indirectly by giving information to bad guys. Without regulated user insurance, storing cryptocurrencies on such services is nothing but gambling, and only a matter of time before something like this happens.

I don't understand their statement about compensating for allegedly stolen user funds - because they don't seem to be sure if someone just emptied their own wallets or someone hacked hot wallets

$150 million is a pretty big amount, somehow it doesn't seem to me that they have it in their insurance fund - but there is always the option to compensate for the damage in some of their tokens, and those who remember the Bitfinex case when 119,756 were hacked remember how the victims were compensated, in company BFX token.


nelson4lov, can you reduce size of images in OP? Not only will everything look nicer and clearer, but it will also be easier for those users who have slow internet connections and limited internet traffic. You can use this code, just adjust size by changing numbers.

Code:

[img width=1000 height=600]Link Here]

[DeathAngel]

Ridiculous that this is still happening in 2021, sad for the people who have lost money but like you say OP, ‘not your keys, not your bitcoin’.

People just don’t learn. Guys please don’t leave your crypto on exchanges or if you have to, if you like day trading, move your coins off the exchanges when you’re not actively trading.

Exchanges should not be used as wallets, use your brain.

[coolcoinz]

I really admire with Kucoin administration's reaction. Looks like they cares about the users and try to do their best to recover lost funds.

Really? Saying that funds are safe when they are being transferred out of users accounts and into some outside address?
I know the employees are doing what they're told and usually PR people like Alicia don't know what's going on in the database, but from the looks of it they were all caught off guard and their first reaction was to cover it up in case it's just a few accounts.


I can never understand why exchanges prefer fast withdrawals over security. If withdrawals were confirmed by real people instead of set on automated there wouldn't be so many of these thefts.

[rexxarofmoknathal]

I woke up really worried that all my funds on KuCoin were gone after seeing this news. Then surprisingly and to my relief none of my coins have been withdrawn, everything remains intact.

I wonder whether this is because I had no funds in the main account and only few hundred dollars in the trading account which were spread over ~3 coins but not much  

Or perhaps the funds were so low that whatever standards the hacker used to select accounts for withdrawal mine came to below that threshold

What do you guys think?

[coolcoinz]

Ridiculous that this is still happening in 2021, sad for the people who have lost money but like you say OP, ‘not your keys, not your bitcoin’.

People just don’t learn. Guys please don’t leave your crypto on exchanges or if you have to, if you like day trading, move your coins off the exchanges when you’re not actively trading.

Exchanges should not be used as wallets, use your brain.

Tell that to traders. There's really no other way to trade without keeping open positions and stop losses. Some people trade with leverage and you also can't do it without keeping money on the platform. While I don't keep money on exchanges, I don't think it's the fault of users who want to trade. All responsibility lies on the exchange. If they can't secure the platform they should never open it up for trading. So many of these people who run exchanges don't even know what a cold wallet is or deliberately choose to ignore them because it's too much of a hassle to have to transfer coins between wallets and pay fees.

[Leviathan.007]

Considering the strong method you can you use to keep your account safe like 2 factor authentication and email/phone authentication I don't know how in world an exchange like Kucoin can be hacked. This story will show you again why you should not hold all your funds in exchanges. I usually keep my long term investments on hardware wallet and just hold less than 10 percent of the funds on exchanges. However, maybe this negative fundamental news will effect the price of some erc-20 token soon.

[ReiMomo]

I don't know if the hack happened is the inside job or what, because it is impossible to hack a hot wallet.

But the good news is there is SAFU, but then, we could really trust exchange sites to leave a huge amount there. If you are willing to leave it there then you are willing to risk that amount.

As I know them last few months they had different tied ups like on auto trading bot, I guess that was the reason they are being compromised and get hacked. Who's next? OKEX?

[20kevin20]

Considering the strong method you can you use to keep your account safe like 2 factor authentication and email/phone authentication I don't know how in world an exchange like Kucoin can be hacked. This story will show you again why you should not hold all your funds in exchanges. I usually keep my long term investments on hardware wallet and just hold less than 10 percent of the funds on exchanges. However, maybe this negative fundamental news will effect the price of some erc-20 token soon.

2FA protects your account and just the number of coins your account owns. If someone gains access to KuCoin's wallet, you can have as much security as you want - it's not going to protect your coins because the exchange is holding them, not you.

Sorry for those who were unfortunate enough to lose their coins. Hopefully something good comes out of this one and more people learn the "not your keys, not your BTC" lesson. Exchanges create their own security. You operate on their exchange through a relationship of trust. Keep your funds off centralized stuff next time..

[coolcoinz]

I don't know if the hack happened is the inside job or what, because it is impossible to hack a hot wallet.

I hope you wanted to write "cold wallet"

I woke up really worried that all my funds on KuCoin were gone after seeing this news. Then surprisingly and to my relief none of my coins have been withdrawn, everything remains intact.

I wonder whether this is because I had no funds in the main account and only few hundred dollars in the trading account which were spread over ~3 coins but not much  

Or perhaps the funds were so low that whatever standards the hacker used to select accounts for withdrawal mine came to below that threshold

What do you guys think?

Your account either was not hacked into or your coins were not held in the wallet or on the server that was hacked. Maybe they just got into one of the employee accounts and managed to create false withdrawals there?

The way exchanges and all custodial wallets operate is they have a number of wallets hot and cold (sometimes all hot which is asking for trouble) and all the coins are mixed there. You don't have your individual user wallet but the database holds the numbers and everything goes to one bag, like in a bank vault.
To gain access, a hacker has to either hack your user account, but then he's only able to withdraw your coins, or hack an employee client machine, which allows him to change the numbers in the database and either create a fake balance on his own account or create a number of withdrawals from many different user accounts to his own addresses. It's very rare that the machine with a hot wallet gets hacked directly, but also possible if the security sucks on the exchange.

[pinggoki]

People just don’t learn. Guys please don’t leave your crypto on exchanges or if you have to, if you like day trading, move your coins off the exchanges when you’re not actively trading.

If they did that then transaction fees will kill them as well. It is true that we aren't supposed to leave our funds on the exchange and I totally agree with it, but what if you are onto daily trade? I suggest is that if you manage to earn a decent profit you could take all the profit you had and just leave some of it so that if something bad happens it will not be fatal and won't have any problems regarding the fees at the same time.
 

[ultrloa]

People just don’t learn. Guys please don’t leave your crypto on exchanges or if you have to, if you like day trading, move your coins off the exchanges when you’re not actively trading.

It is true that we aren't supposed to leave our funds on the exchange and I totally agree with it, but what if you are onto daily trade? I suggest is that if you manage to earn a decent profit you could take all the profit you had and just leave some of it so that if something bad happens it will not be fatal and won't have any problems regarding the fees at the same time.
 

This was discuss for so many times due to many hackings of exchange happen for the past years and we shouldn't really trust to leave our balances on any exchange whether its big or not since if they will get hack for sure its a huge pain in the ass for us users since we don't know if we will get refunded or not. So we should not be lazy and always withdraw once we end our trades for the day.

[larus]

Anyway, they already promissed to return all money to the customers. Not bad

[cheezcarls]

The last time I’ve accessed KuCoin was about a year ago just to change my password. I only traded some tokens to BTC and withdrew them last 2018. I feel bad for those who are affected by this hack, but good thing that KuCoin had insurance to cover the losses of several accounts.

This is why I would never trust the claims of these CEXs that their security features are proven safe and hack-proof. Not even Binance was safe from getting hacked last year. These hackers have become more intelligent even if these exchanges have upgraded their security features, it’s just that they’re one step ahead.

[Twinkledoe]

Another situation that solidify the fact that we should not store our funds to exchanges, even if they have high security protocol. That amount is already huge, if it happens to small exchange, they maybe thinking of shutting down. But good to know that it's their hot wallets that are being compromised not their cold wallets. And since kucoin is one of the top exchanges, they can recover these losses fast and compensate those users who got lost their funds.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

The fact that we're acting surprise just got me disappointed. Kucoin is like a clone to Binance and let's not forget Binance got hacked too few months back even with all their security put in place. No centralized system be it exchange, service providers etc are immune to hack, it's only decentralized system that are immune wihich is why we're all advice to make use of them.

When Binance was hacked, they had insurance funds that help them pay back their debts so I believe that of Kucoin exchange won't be any different but if they didn't setup an insurance policy after the Binance hack that's all on them.

The sad truth is, as far we used the centralized exchanges for trading, at one point we'll have funds on the exchange. The amount would difer based on our trading capital. Kucoin won't be the last exchange to get hacked, if you were lucky not to have your funds on the exchange when the hack occured then you should take this as a warning.

[MFahad]

This is yet another reason why storing large amount of funds on exchanges is a bad idea.

This is the biggest mistake of the people who keep thier funds on the exchanges and yet feel that their funds are safe. Nothing is safe on online exchanges. Even though Binance have Safu funds and Kucoin also have insurance funds, but still it is very risky to keep your life savings in an exchange.

[uszaty43]

Hmmm, it's quite an unfortunate situation to be honest and I am glad Kucoin team plans to refund!

[bitcoinst]

After unplanned movement of $150M in funds, KuCoin discloses hack

Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin has been hacked.

In a blog post released on Friday night, the exchange disclosed that it had "detected some large withdrawals since September 26, 2020" from its hot wallet. While the exchange has not disclosed the amount lost in the hack, one of the Ethereum addresses associated with the hack shows roughly $150M in funds stolen.

On Friday night, users across various social media platform platforms began to complain that they were having issues withdrawing assets from KuCoin. While the KuCoin team assured users that "funds will be safe," that no longer is the case.

In a livestream, KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu reassured his users that funds in this hack will be "covered completely by KuCoin and our insurance fund." Lyu also noted that hacked funds were only "a small part of our total assets holdings" and that KuCoin is currently working with other exchanges like Binance and Huobi and law enforcement to track down the assets.

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/78912/after-unplanned-movement-of-150m-in-funds-kucoin-discloses-hack

[target]

This is another reason why there is the need to move to DEX. Big exchanges are always going ot be the target for these hackers.  Kucoin is big enough, if they have the plan to cover the funds for those who are affected, they got to say it now.

If its in the hands of the hackers already I donlt see any reason why they can't dump it right now on uniswap and any other swapping pages. Should we be expecting a huge dump of the prices?