Poloniex hot wallet hacked with losses reportedly over $33m

Poloniex investor Justin Sun has confirmed the attack, saying the exchange “will fully reimburse the affected funds.”

Crypto exchange Poloniex appears to be the latest trading platform to suffer a hack, resulting in a loss of more than $33 million worth of crypto.

According to analysts at PeckShield, the hackers drained millions of dollars from one of the exchange’s hot wallet. Research analyst at 21co Tom Wan said in an X post that currently estimated loss is at $34 million.

A @DuneAnalytics query ready for you to track how much the Potential hacker got from Poloniex

Currently estimated loss at ~$34M, including:
– $10M ETH
– $2.56M GLM
– $2.4M LINK

and more https://t.co/judOiLzv4q pic.twitter.com/gcB4eofdwB

— Tom Wan (@tomwanhh) November 10, 2023

Poloniex investor Justin Sun has confirmed the incident, but did not elaborate on the matter. He reassured customers that the exchange “maintains a healthy financial position and will fully reimburse the affected funds.”

We are currently investigating the Poloniex hack incident. Poloniex maintains a healthy financial position and will fully reimburse the affected funds. Additionally, we are exploring opportunities for collaboration with other exchanges to facilitate the recovery of these funds.

— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) November 10, 2023

The OPNX crypto exchange said in an X post it had frozen all the OX tokens stolen from Poloniex (197.7 million OX, which represents over 5% of the token’s total supply).

After the Poloniex exploit tonight and subsequent transfer of exchange tokens to the hacker wallet — we can confirm that the entirety of the hackers $OX (197,756,563 $OX) were immediately frozen and cannot be transferred or sold.

The address:https://t.co/5MY4LNKtbu

— OPNX (LAMB) 🐑 (@OPNX_Official) November 10, 2023

Poloniex’s official X account said that one of its wallets “has been disabled for maintenance,” without revealing details on the matter.

Have you ever lost $2.5mil because of copy paste mistake?

Because this hacker just did!

Not a long time ago, A hacker managed to exploit #Poloniex and still millions of dollars out of this CEX.

Shortly after, he tried to move the funds and send $2.5mil to his wallet. The only… pic.twitter.com/ZV4Fha8p7k

— OverDose (@Overdose_AI) November 10, 2023

An X user @Overdose_AI noticed that the hackers seemingly have already lost around $2.5 million by mistakenly sending GLM tokens to a smart contract address instead of a personal wallet.

Poloniex Hacker is selling stolen assets on #Ethereum for $ETH and stolen assets on #Tron Network for $TRX.

Stay safe! #poloniexhackerhttps://t.co/RFi9PHpbyphttps://t.co/6BlwKUOHG5 pic.twitter.com/G6ETnc3Q1M

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) November 10, 2023

Analysts at Lookonchain claim the hackers are also trying to launder the stolen funds on Ethereum for ETH and TRON for TRX.

This is not the first time Poloniex suffers a hacker attack. Back in 2014, the exchange lost more than 12% of its Bitcoin (BTC) reserves due to a vulnerability in its code base.