After multiple users complained that their phones had been stolen, the CEO of crypto.com confirmed the breach. Kris further said that the exchange was back online “about 13 to 14 hours” after the incident. He also said that all the accounts that were impacted were reimbursed. However, he did not provide any details on how the hack occurred.
Crypto.com User Accounts Hacked
Marszalek’s remark was Crypto.com’s first official acknowledgment that a hack took place. After this incident, Crypto.com temporarily halted withdrawals on its site on Sunday. Customers were also requested to reset their two-factor authentication out of an excess of caution.
– no customer funds were lost – the downtime of withdrawal infra was ~14 hours – our team has hardened the infrastructure in response to the incident We will share a full post mortem after the internal investigation is completed. — Kris | Crypto.com (@Kris_HK) January 18, 2022 The corporation then reassured users that their cash was safe multiple times in its correspondence. This led to suspicion that Crypto.com would reimburse any client losses.
How Much Was Lost in the Accounts Hack?
PeckShield tweeted on Monday that the losses could be a total of $15 million in ETH. In the tweet, PeckShield claimed that half of the funds were being sent to Tornado Cash to be washed. Tornado Cash claims to offer non-custodial anonymous transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. This means that it can conceal the location of cryptocurrency transfers. According to another researcher from blockchain data firm OXT Research, the exchange may have lost $33 million as a result of the attack.
What Next?
When asked about the magnitude of the losses, Marszalek told that Crypto.com was still working on a post-mortem of the incident. This will be published in the next couple of days on the company’s blog. Accounts hacked, the amounts, and everything related must be published in this blog. While Crypto.com is the world’s fourth-largest cryptocurrency exchange, it has been aggressively expanding its presence in the United States in recent months. With stunts such as viral advertisements which starred Matt Damon as the actor. It also made a $700 million purchase of the naming rights to the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers Arena. The company claims itself as the fastest-growing crypto exchange and has increased its venture capital arm to $500 million to support early-stage crypto firms, but the consequences from this week’s attack may threaten to halt some of its expansion in the United States.
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