Cryptocurrency exchange Bitrue has suffered a multi-million-dollar hack, resulting in the theft of tens of billions of Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens and other digital assets. The company announced that hackers were able to exploit a hot wallet, stealing roughly $23m in crypto assets, including Ethereum (ETH), and ERC-20 tokens such as meme asset SHIB, interoperable blockchain Quant (QNT), metaverse gaming platform Gala (GALA), layer-2 scaling solution Polygon (MATIC), and decentralized application (DApp) marketplace Holochain (HOT). Blockchain security firm PeckShield suggests the wallet address associated with the attack exchanged the stolen QNT, SHIB, HOT and MATIC for approximately 8,540 ETH.
Bankless Times note that transactions made with digital assets are irreversible once confirmed by the network, making it more difficult to recover stolen funds.
In the past few months, the vast majority of cryptocurrency hacking has taken place against decentralized finance (DeFi) projects such as the Poly Network, rather than centralised exchanges. An ever-present threat, Christopher Allen, chief architect of blockchain firm Blockstream, said last month that cryptocurrencies could have a built-in “expiration date” to help guard against attacks. He suggested that if all cryptocurrencies included a date where they became unusable, it would force attackers to turn them into fiat currencies before the cutoff, and would also encourage token holders to pay attention to their holdings.
While no company wants to suffer a cyber attack, conventional businesses can rely upon their insurance policies to recover any financial losses. This is less straightforward for many cryptocurrency businesses, who struggle to source the same level of insurance coverage. Those that do have insurance policies should not necessarily find solace, as insurer Aon recently warned many policies are likely to contain exclusion clauses for cyber crime.
In a related story, it has emerged that a UK Metropolitan Police detective has been accused of stealing the equivalent of $11,700 in BTC from a suspected drug dealer. The UK’s Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) found evidence that the discharge of the officer had amounted to gross misconduct. Detective Constable Nicky Mitchell had previously claimed the cryptocurrency was now worth just $189.
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