The funds stolen during the hack on the Upbit exchange, which suffered an attack in late 2019 and lost over 340,000 Ethereum (ETH), have been moved yesterday.
Thanks to the tracking service offered by Whale Alert it is possible to see both the total funds moved and their destination.Â
Where have the funds of the hack been moved
The following movements took place yesterday:
- 9721 ETH, or just under $2 million, to unknown addresses;
- 137 ETH, about $30,000, towards the Binance exchange.
The criminals have therefore tried to test the ground by sending a part of ETH to the exchange in order to liquidate them, but Binance, which has suffered an attack in the past, losing 7 thousand BTC, has prepared systems for freezing stolen funds.
This morning, the hackers continued to move more Ethereum (ETH), this time towards another exchange, BYEX. These are the movements reported by Whale Alert:
- 128 ETH, just under $30,000;
- 151 ETH, about $30,000;
- 78 ETH, about $15,000;
- 162 ETH, around $30,000.
From the various transactions and the multiple amounts, it can be deduced that this exchange has not implemented measures to freeze or block funds coming from suspicious addresses and therefore the criminals have managed to cash a total of 519 ETH, more than 100 thousand dollars, which most likely were invested in other tokens and then resold for other cryptocurrencies.
The problems of centralized exchanges like Upbit
This event is a reminder that it is never a good idea to keep funds on centralized exchanges because there is always the risk of hacking or closure of the exchange, leading to the blocking of funds, so it is always best to withdraw funds from exchanges and keep them in proprietary non-custodial wallets.
Upbit is obviously not the only one that has been hacked. In addition to Binance, some decentralized financial services have also recently been hit by hacker attacks.
