Cyber Criminals Steal Millions After Hacking Popular Crypto Exchange

Hackers stole millions in digital assets from popular cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, the company announced Thursday.

Crypto.com said in a blog post that hackers had compromised 483 traders’ accounts and stole 4,836.26 of ethereum tokens, 443.93 in bitcoin and approximately $66,200 in U.S. dollars, with the amount of funds stolen totaling over $30 million.

“On 17 January 2022, Crypto.com learned that a small number of users had unauthorized crypto withdrawals on their accounts,” the company said. “Crypto.com promptly suspended withdrawals for all tokens to initiate an investigation and worked around the clock to address the issue.”

The company said that most of the unauthorized withdrawals were successfully prevented by its security measures, and all customers who had their money stolen were reimbursed.

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said the company was improving its security features, including its multi-factor authorization software, in response to the hack.

“The safety of our customers’ funds is our highest priority, and we are continually enhancing our Defence-in-Depth security and protection measures,” Marszalek said in the announcement. “While we are reminded of the existence of bad actors intent on committing fraud, this new Worldwide Account Protection Program, along with our new MFA infrastructure, gives our users unprecedented protection of their funds, and hopefully, peace of mind.”

Marszalek first acknowledged the hack in an interview with Bloomberg Live on Wednesday after users reported issues with their accounts and the company had issued statements acknowledging a “security incident.”

Crypto exchanges have been frequent victims of hackers seeking to steal traders’ funds; a hacker stole roughly $600 million from users of decentralized finance platform Poly Network in August 2021 before eventually returning the funds.

Binance, one of the largest and most popular crypto exchanges, was hacked in 2019 for roughly $40 million.