Huobi Global’s cryptocurrency exchange, HTX, has successfully recovered the funds stolen by a hacker at the end of September. They have also issued a reward of 250 Ether (ETH) as a bounty after resolving the security breach. On September 25th, one of HTX’s hot wallets was emptied of 5,000 ETH, valued atx approximately $8 million at the time. Shortly following the attack, the exchange contacted the hacker and claimed to have identified their identity.
HTX eventually offered a 5% bounty, equivalent to around $400,000, and committed to refraining from taking legal action if the hacker returned 95% of the stolen funds before the deadline on October 2nd.
The third quarter of 2023 has seen a surge in hacking incidents. According to a recent report from the blockchain security platform Immunefi, there were 76 hacks targeting crypto and Web3 projects/firms in Q3 2023, compared to 30 in Q3 2022.
During the same week as the HTX hack, the decentralized cross-chain protocol Mixin Network also fell victim to an attack resulting in losses of around $200 million. The attackers exploited a vulnerability in a third-party cloud service provider. Mixin Network offered a $20 million bug bounty in exchange for the return of the stolen funds, but the likelihood of recovering the funds remains uncertain.
It looks like the HTX/Huobi hacker has returned the funds (4997 ETH)
0x48bd1179529343c7a970045290fd2b0b1d946f64e17c443a528e24bf7cdbb817 pic.twitter.com/MknehuhM6x
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) October 7, 2023
We have confirmed that the hacker has fully returned all funds, as promised, and we have also paid the hack a white hat bonus of 250 ETH. The hacker made the right choice. We would like to express our gratitude to everyone in the industry for their help! https://t.co/SwY49A25h2
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) October 7, 2023
On October 6th, Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, suggested to Bloomberg that North Korean hackers could be responsible for the exploit targeting Mixin Network.
