Shortly after cryptocurrency exchange HTX (formerly known as Huobi) reported an $8 million hack, Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao offered assistance to HTX's security team to investigate the incident. Swift action is crucial when attempting to trace and recover stolen cryptocurrencies, as hackers often employ tactics like using mixers to obfuscate their activities or converting stolen assets into privacy tokens.
The hack, discovered by blockchain analytics platform Cyvers on September 24, resulted in the depletion of 5,000 Ethereum from one of HTX's hot wallets. To mitigate the losses, HTX has offered a "white hat bonus" equal to 5% of the stolen funds, totaling nearly $400,000. However, hackers have been given a seven-day window to comply with this offer. It's worth noting that HTX primarily communicates in Mandarin, as evidenced by a screenshot provided.
CZ humorously remarked on the similarity between the rebranded HTX and Sam Bankman-Fried's well-known cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Nevertheless, it's important to note that while HTX suffered a hack, FTX was suspected of fraudulent activity, making the two situations incomparable. Responding to a tweet from Justin Sun, founder of Tron and an advisor to HTX, CZ enlisted Binance's security team to assist in tracking the stolen funds. Sun confirmed that HTX would take full responsibility for the losses incurred by its users, adding:
"$8 million is a relatively small sum compared to the $3 billion in assets held by our users. It's also equivalent to two weeks of revenue for the HTX platform."
In response to the hack, HTX has implemented real-time monitoring mechanisms to prevent similar losses in the future. Although Sun denied having a significant stake in HTX, he pledged to conduct multiple live broadcasts in both English and Chinese to discuss exchange security matters.
Binance has not provided an immediate response to Cointelegraph's request for comments regarding the ongoing investigation into the HTX hack. This incident occurred just a day after the decentralized peer-to-peer network Mixin Network suffered a hack, resulting in the loss of nearly $200 million. This breach was linked to a database leak from a third-party cloud service provider. An independent investigation by Web3 SaaS analytics platform 0xScope revealed that the hackers had a history with Mixin Network. In 2022, an address associated with the hacker received 5 ETH from Mixin, subsequently depositing it into Binance.
Deposits and withdrawals on the Mixin Network will resume once the vulnerability is confirmed and fixed, but plans for recovering lost assets have not been immediately disclosed.
