Major Exploit Sees $6 Million In XRP Lost

Philippines-based crypto exchange Coins.ph is rumored to be the latest victim of an exploit that has potentially led to the loss of 12.2 million XRP ($6 million) for the firm. However, a part of these funds seem to have already been recovered. 

Evidence Of The Alleged Exploit

According to a report by The Block, the hack on the crypto exchange occurred on October 17, with the media outlet citing a source familiar with the matter. Coins is yet to release an official statement as to whether or not the incident truly occurred.

However, on-chain data suggests that this exploit might have indeed occurred, as The Block noted. According to data on the blockchain explorer XRP scan, the crypto exchange experienced 13 outflows, with 999,999.999 XRP sent out from the exchange in each transaction to the same wallet, although the last batch seems not to have been processed.

Following that, a further 200,000.999999 XRP was sent out of the exchange. It is worth mentioning that all these transactions occurred in the space of 32 minutes as they all occurred simultaneously. The total of these transactions (the ones processed) sums up to over 12.2 million XRP. 

XRP market cap currently at $6.8 billion. Chart: TradingView.com

Upon receipt of these funds, the alleged hacker then proceeded to send them to various destinations, including crypto exchanges OKX, Simple Swap, ChangeNOW, and WhiteBIT. The Block reported that a WhiteBIT spokesperson also seemed to confirm the exploit. 

The representative stated that they blocked 445,000 as soon as they received a request from the Phillipines-based exchange Coins to flag down the address linked to the stolen tokens. WhiteBIT is also said to have reached out to blockchain analytics platforms Cristal and Chainalysis with a request to flag addresses related to the stolen XRP.  

Increased Hacks On Crypto Entities 

The attack on firms in the crypto industry has continued to increase from last year when the industry was reported to have lost over $2 billion from crypto hacks. In September, another crypto exchange, Huobi, was the victim of these exploiters as it lost almost $8 million. 

Notably, a recent report reveals that South Korea’s Upbit cryptocurrency exchange faced a staggering 159,000 hacking attempts during the first half of 2023. What’s particularly striking is that this number was twice the amount of hacking attempts encountered by the exchange in the same period of 2022.

The DeFi landscape has also not been left out, as several DeFi exchanges and platforms have also been victims of hacks and exploits this year. As of June, over $665 million had been reported to have been lost due to such occurrences.

Featured image from InfoWorld