Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange HTX, previously known as Huobi, has suffered a substantial loss of $7.9 million in ETH due to a hacker attack. Justin Sun, the founder of Tron and an advisor to HTX, confirmed the breach and stated that the exchange has fully covered the losses and resolved related issues. Despite the relatively small sum of losses in comparison to its assets, HTX is actively seeking to recover the stolen funds.
Furthermore, they have identified the hacker’s “true identity” and threatened to involve law enforcement if the funds are not returned within a week. HTX is even offering a 5% bug bounty and the possibility of a job to the hacker if the stolen funds are returned.
This incident occurred shortly after HTX’s rebranding and was detected in advance by blockchain investigators like PeckShield, who identified suspicious outbound ETH transactions.
Justin Sun noted that the loss represents a minor fraction of the $3 billion in assets held by users, equivalent to just two weeks’ revenue for the HTX platform. While the share of lost funds is relatively small, the exchange is making strong efforts to recover them. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has offered assistance from Binance’s security team to track the hacker’s funds, highlighting the industry’s collective commitment to cybersecurity.
In a similar incident earlier this month, cryptocurrency exchange CoinEX proposed a bug bounty program after losing an estimated $54 million in assets to hackers associated with North Korea’s Lazarus Group, showcasing the growing concern over cybersecurity within the crypto sector.
