As per the public knowledge, on November 27, Upbit, one of the largest South Korean crypto exchanges, has been hacked. As a result, around 342,000 of ETH (~USD 49 million) were stolen.

Upbit confirmed the hack in a statement on November 27th that at approximately 13:06 on November 27th, 2019 (KST), 342,000 ETH was sent from Upbit’s Ethereum hot wallet to an anonymous wallet address. The Upbit stuff took immediate actions to protect customers’ assets, and no investors’ assets were lost.

The funds’ movement was covered by the Twitter account Whale Alert.

⚠️⚠️⚠️ #Upbit has confirmed they have been hacked and 342,000 ETH has been reported stolen. We will monitor the hack address and inform the community when any transfers are made.https://t.co/2LDhZVl9dy — Whale Alert (@whale_alert) November 27, 2019

Soon after the hack, we received the hacker’s addresses from the Upbit representatives and blacklisted them. We have been carefully monitoring the crypto space and blacklisting all the addresses connected to the hacker.

On November 29, we had received a deposit from one of the blacklisted addresses. With several previous cases that involved ChangeNOW stopping stolen funds, we suppose it was a test deposit to check if our risk prevention system will stop it. The deposit amounted to around 9 ETH (~USD 1,322). The funds were immediately frozen and transferred to secure storage.

What we are going to do next?

We are in close contact with all legal parties involved. As soon as we receive an official inquiry from the Korean police, the funds will be returned to Upbit.

We are actively cooperating with Korean police, as well as Upbit representatives; ChangeNOW techs managed to gather some information about the hacker that, hopefully, will help out with the police investigation.

As always, ChangeNOW doesn’t tolerate illegal activities and money laundering through its service. Unfortunately, hacks are a common thing in crypto and, as the regulations are still being developed, from time to time the hackers remain unpunished.

The ChangeNOW urgently advise: keep your funds in secure storage. Don’t hold your funds on third-party custodial services. Keep your keys private. Learn more about how to be safe while holding crypto.

We are always ready to do whatever it takes to keep doing the right things. We will keep working with exchanges to prevent money laundering if hacks do happen and perfect our risk management system to eliminate the possibility to provide services to a hacker.

Keep safe!