Japanese cryptocurrency trading platform Liquid Global was the target of a cyber attack that resulted in the theft of more than $90 million worth of cryptocurrencies.
According to the company, some of its digital wallets were “compromised” and the hackers transferred the assets to four other wallets.
On its official Twitter account, the platform reported: “Important Notice: We are sorry to announce that #LiquidGlobal warm wallets have been compromised, we are moving assets into the cold wallet. We are currently investigating and will provide regular updates. In the meantime deposits and withdrawals will be suspended”.
Important Notice:
We are sorry to announce that #LiquidGlobal warm wallets were compromised, we are moving assets into the cold wallet.We are currently investigating and will provide regular updates. In the meantime deposits and withdrawals will be suspended.
— Liquid Global Official (@Liquid_Global) August 19, 2021
According to the CoinMarketCap website, Liquid Global is among the largest cryptocurrency platforms in daily trading volume.
How did the attack happen?
Elliptic, a blockchain analysis company, revealed how hackers managed to hijack cryptocurrencies. According to experts, part of the stolen value was being converted into ethereum through decentralized exchanges without intermediaries.
“This allows the attacker to prevent these assets from being frozen as is possible with many ethereum tokens,” explains one of Elliptic’s analysts.
Also in a statement, Liquid Global said that of the embezzled amount, $16.13 million of assets were frozen. This was due to the help the company had from the cryptocurrency community and other brokers.
One of the world’s leading cryptocurrency brokers
Liquid Global is among the top 20 cryptocurrency brokers with the highest daily trading volume in the world.
The action at the Japanese company coincides with the recent attack on the Poly Network finance platform, the case known as the “greatest digital coin theft ever done”, but was resolved after the hacker spontaneously returned the money.
News like this has become more and more frequent in the cryptocurrency market.
Hackers invade platforms around the world:
Poly Network
In the first week of August, the Poly Network protocol, which operates in the area of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), reported that it suffered a hacker attack in which around $600 million was stolen – one of the biggest attacks in the history of the cryptocurrency market.
Poly is an interoperability protocol between blockchains, that is, it works by connecting different networks, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ontology.
On their twitter profile, the Poly Network team shared their open letter to “Dear Hacker”.
In the letter, the company said it wanted to establish communication with the thieves and emphasized that the stolen funds “are from tens of thousands of crypto community members, hence the people”.
— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 10, 2021
A day after the announcement, the hacker responsible for the attack began returning some of the resources he had taken.
Most of the amount has already been returned, however, more than $200 million is “locked” into an account that needs both Poly Network and hacker passwords to be accessed.
In addition, Poly offered $500,000 and a job as head of security to the hacker after he returned the stolen valuables and said he just wanted to teach the company a lesson.
#PolyNetwork has no intention of holding #mrwhitehat legally responsible and cordially invites him to be our Chief Security Advisor. $500,000 bounty is on the way. Whatever #mrwhitehat chooses to do with the bounty in the end, we have no objections. https://t.co/4IaZvyWRGz
— Poly Network (@PolyNetwork2) August 17, 2021
Pancake Bunny
In May of this year, the price of the Pancake Bunny (BUNNY) token, native to the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform of the same name, lost more than 90% of its value after a hacker attack.
The criminal hacked into the digital currency system hosted on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and stole over $200 million in assets.
On the platform’s twitter profile they issued a statement: “Attention Bunny Fam. Our project has suffered a flash loan attack from an outside exploiter. We will be posting a post mortem, in depth analysis, but for the time being we would like to update the community as to how this happened”.
Attention Bunny Fam
Our project has suffered a flash loan attack from an outside exploiter.
We will be posting a post mortem, in depth analysis, but for the time being we would like to update the community as to how this happened.
— pancakebunny.finance (@PancakeBunnyFin) May 20, 2021
The platform completed by informing how the attack happened :
“1- The hacker used PancakeSwap to borrow a huge amount of BNB.
2- The hacker then went on to manipulate the price of USDT/BNB as well as BUNNY/BNB
3- The hacker ended up getting a huge amount of BUNNY through this flash loan”.
The hacker took a total of 697,000 BUNNY and 114,000 BNB.
During the attack, the price of Pancake Bunny skyrocketed from $150 to $240 by the time the criminal acquired his tokens, and then plummeted to nearly $0 after the huge sale.
Pancake Bunny is one of the most promising decentralized finance projects of Binance Smart Chain, the arm of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Before the attack, the estimated market value of the token was $1 billion.
