Highlights:

South Korean Exchange UpBit has been attacked by a group of Hackers

About 58 Billion Won or 340k ETH was stolen

All transactions in and out of the exchange have been halted

Over $50 million have been withdrawn from South Korean Exchange, UpBit to an anonymous account, and all transactions have been stopped. The exchange has since come up with an official statement, saying that it will cover all of it with corporate funds.

According to a report, 93% of the withdrawal was in Ethereum and the rest in BitTorrent Token (BTT).

A snapshot of the suspicious transaction is below

A few hours after the suspicious transaction first started making the rounds on social media, Upbit has confirmed the security breach with a statement from Dunamu CEO Lee Seok-woo. Dunamu is the company that operates the Upbit exchange.

“To ensure that your assets are unharmed, 342,000 ETH transferred to unknown wallets will be covered by UPbit assets. We’re working on it, and I’ll tell you as soon as I’m done”, said Dunamu’s CEO Lee.

Cryptocurrency exchanges continue to be an attractive target for hackers – in 2019, we have seen Binance, Cryptopia, Bithumb, Gatehub, Bitrue and others suffer from security breaches. The Bitrue hack appears to be the largest 2019 exchange hack in terms of the value of the stolen assets, with the Binance hack (the stolen BTC was worth approximately $40 million at the time) coming second.

In the meantime, Upbit deposits and withdrawals are now reportedly suspended, and the exchange estimates that it will take at least two weeks for them to resume, so users are urged to avoid sending any cryptocurrency to the platform before they’re advised to.