Exactly what caused the crypto market crash on Wednesday night is still a heated debate, with some claiming it was caused by a $200 million Bitcoin sale in Coinbase. However, it looks like it could have something to do with an attack that took place on Bitrue – a Singapore based crypto exchange. During the attack, $4.5 million was stolen in XRP and ADA, causing both tokens to drop significantly in price in the hours following the attack. Authorities have been notified about the attack and the exchange placed itself into maintenance mode while the exchange recovers.
A Single Attacker Hitting a Vulnerability in Risk Control
According to the official statement from Bitrue, a single hacker managed to identify and exploit a vulnerability in the Risk Control team’s 2nd review process. This gave the hacker access to the personal funds of around 90 Bitrue users who then managed to transfer the funds out of the exchange to various other exchanges in a bid to quickly sell the cryptocurrency and make a profit. However, Bitrue picked up on the attack very quickly and notified Huobi, Bittrex and ChangeNOW about the incoming transactions of stolen funds. The exchanges cooperated completely and helped stop the funds from leaving their exchanges.
Providing Details The Entire Way
Something exchanges so rarely do following an attack is open up to the public and disclose everything that happened. In a rather nice turn of events, Bitrue has disclosed everything it knows so far about the attack to the public, as well as reassuring users that everything is under control. The exchange stated that all funds are insured and will be back in accounts within the next few days. Bitrue even went as far as providing a link to the XRP block explorer showing the hacker moving the funds. This is a nice change of events, especially after the MapleChange “hack”. MapleChange claimed that it was hacked, but in the hours following the attack took all of its social media channels and groups offline as well as the website, failing to communicate with the world.
Bitrue was planning to get back up and running before the weekend began, but it’s better that the exchange takes its time to perfect everything and fix any remaining bugs. In the hours following the attack, Bitrue checked all systems and security procedures to ensure that there were no further bugs that could be exploited in a similar way. It’s finally nice to see an exchange taking a hack seriously.
