The GDAC cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea was breached, losing over $13.9 million in cryptocurrency.
In reaction to the attack, the exchange has paused all deposits and withdrawals and is carrying out urgent server repair, according to a statement made by GDAC CEO Han Seunghwan on April 10.
The notification states that the attacker took control of a few of the exchange’s hot wallets on April 9 in the early morning and started moving cryptocurrency into those wallets at 7 am Korean Standard Time.
The incident resulted in the theft of about 61 Bitcoin (BTC $29,266), 350.5 Ether (ETH $1,898), 10 million of the WEMIX virtual currency, and $220,000 worth of Tether (USDT $1.00).
At the pricing of April 10, this equates to almost $13.9 million in cryptocurrency. According to the release, the amount taken represents “about 23% of Gdac’s current total custodial assets.”
The exchange has notified the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of the loss brought on by the attack, informed the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) of the hack, and alerted the police.
Also, GDAC is requesting that cryptocurrency exchanges disregard deposits made from the attacker’s address. Seunghwan claimed that the exchange is unsure of the precise timing of the start of withdrawals.
According to Google Translate, he said: “We ask for your understanding that it is difficult to confirm the resumption point of deposit and withdrawal as the investigation is currently underway,” Hacks of Centralized Exchanges continue to be an issue for the cryptocurrency sector.
A prime example is the $15 million theft from Crypto.com in January 2022. An attacker took $663 million from the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX during a liquidity issue. The GDAC attack could be the year 2023’s first significant centralized crypto exchange compromise.
