CoinEx Confirms Millions Stolen in Crypto Heist
- Written by Shipra Sanganeria Cybersecurity & Tech Writer
In a September 12 announcement, cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx confirmed that it had fallen victim to a crypto heist. resulting in an alleged theft of $53 million.
In a post on its website, the Hong Kong- headquartered company announced that its Risk Control System had ‘’detected anomalous withdrawals from several hot wallet addresses used for temporary storage of user assets on CoinEx exchange.”
After the initial investigation, the company disclosed that the theft was caused due to the leakage of a hot wallet private key. This resulted in unauthorized transactions involving Ethereum (ETH), Tron (TRON), and Polygon (MATIC) cryptocurrency.
Although the exact amount is yet to be disclosed by CoinEx, investigations by blockchain security firms PeckShield and CertiK Alert estimate the losses to be a total of $31 million and $53 million, respectively.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), PeckShield stated that following the theft CoinEx was drained of $19M in Ethereum (ETH), $11.5M in TRON, and $295k in Polygon (MATIC). The remaining $72 million have been transferred to the company-controlled cold wallet for safe keeping.
Furthermore, the exchange platform has taken other precautionary measures like, rebuilding and redeploying the wallet system, freezing malicious actors’ assets, suspending deposits and withdrawal services of all crypto assets, as well as an emergency closure of the hot wallet server.
These services are expected to resume once the company’s IT security teams ensure that all the incident-related risks are eliminated. It has also published a list of suspicious addresses involved in the incident and urged other exchange platforms and relevant project teams to freeze the fund movement across these published email addresses.
It also assured its customers that their assets were safe, ‘’CoinEx solemnly promises that users’ assets have NOT been, and will NOT be affected in this attack, and the CoinEx User Asset Security Foundation will bear the financial losses from this incident,’’ the post read. It has also advised its customers to avoid potential asset losses by not making any deposits to their old addresses, until CoinEx’s system recovery process is complete.
Cyberattack Leads to System Shutdown of MGM Resorts
- Written by Shipra Sanganeria Cybersecurity & Tech Writer
MGM Resorts International has shutdown some of its computer systems, following a cybersecurity incident. The hotel and casino giant witnessed its online reservation system, website, and even in-casino services like ATM, slot, and credit card machines getting impacted.
The company posted a brief note on its official Twitter (now X) page, wherein it disclosed the incident and said that it was working with external cybersecurity experts to investigate the incident.
‘’MGM Resorts recently identified a cybersecurity issue affecting some of the Company’s systems. Promptly after detecting the issue, we quickly began an investigation with assistance from leading external cybersecurity experts. We also notified law enforcement and took prompt action to protect our systems and data, including shutting down certain systems,’’ the statement read.
The resort owner also announced that it would continue with the investigation to understand the nature and impact of this incident, which began on September 11.
The attack not only impacted all the 31 MGM resorts, but also its rewards app. As a security measure, it has resorted to manual operations for payments, as credit card and ATM machines on its properties remain non-functional.
Customers, members of its Rewards program have been advised to get in touch with the desired resort’s reception for reservation and other services as the main website and app continues to remain offline.
MGM has not yet disclosed any details about the attack or the names of the threat actors behind the incident. Thus, the purpose of the attackers continues to remain unknown.
In the past few years, this is the second time that MGM Resorts has been subjected to cyberattack. Earlier in 2019, it suffered a security breach, during which hackers had stolen information like, names, date of birth, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses of millions of hotel and casino guests.
