Liquid Cryptocurrency Exchange reveals how it’s tracking hackers who stole over $100million from the platform

Leading Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid, which was hit by hackers, stealing almost $100m (£73m), has revealed its effort to track and recover the said money.

In a public statement released on the cryptocurrency exchange’s blog, Liquid confirmed the heist and said that a total of approximately 91.35mm USDe of crypto-assets were moved out of Liquid wallets by an unauthorized party.

While confirming that 69 different crypto assets were misappropriated and sent to other exchanges or Defi swapping venues, it stated that Liquid’s teams are still assessing the attack vector used and taking measures to mitigate the impact to users.

Liquid assured their customers and said that they are currently tracing the movement of the assets and working with other exchanges to freeze and recover funds.

The Statement reads as below:

First Update 19-Aug-2021  

At roughly 7:50 AM SGT on August 19th, Liquid’s Operations and Technology teams detected unauthorized access of some of the crypto wallets managed at Liquid.

Status of Liquid Services

• To ensure safety of funds, please do not deposit any crypto assets to your Liquid wallets until further notice.
• Liquid has halted all crypto withdrawals while we assess the impact.
• Fiat withdrawals and deposits remain available.
• Other services on Liquid, including trading and Liquid Earn, remain available.

Impact

The analysis of the impact is ongoing and is subject to change. Thus far we have determined the following data points:

• A total of approximately 91.35mm USDe of crypto assets were moved out of Liquid wallets by an unauthorized party.
  • Of this amount, 16.13mm USDe of ERC-20 assets have been frozen (disabled for onchain movement) due to the assistance of the crypto community and other exchanges.
• 69 different crypto assets were misappropriated and sent to other exchanges or defi swapping venues.
• Assets placed in Liquid Earn are not impacted.

Liquid’s teams are still assessing the attack vector used and taking measures to mitigate the impact to users.

More information will be provided as it becomes available via Liquid Help Center & Liquid Global Twitter.

During this difficult period we greatly appreciate the support from our customers, other exchanges, security experts, and the broader crypto community.  Liquid will continue to do everything in its power to mitigate the impact from this incident and restore full service as soon as possible.

These are the list of known addresses used by the un-authorised party:

The following assets were moved from Liquid’s compromised warm wallets:

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