FTX hacked and over $600 million stolen

The controversial bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange FTX was hacked on the night of Friday, November 11. The hacker or hackers took away more than $600 million.

“FTX has been hacked. FTX applications are malware. Remove them. Chat is open. Do not enter the FTX site because it may download trojans,” is the message posted by the support team on the Telegram channel, reported previous Coindesk. This same claim was later taken up by FTX general counsel Ryne Miller.

Miller himself listed hours later, the exchange had to move the rest of the funds in its possession into cold wallets to mitigate the damage of unauthorized transactions.

According to preliminary reports, the unauthorized entity mobilized several Ethereum tokens, from Solana and Binance Smart Chain.. Some of these ended up on decentralized platforms such as 1inch.

The incident is shrouded in mystery, as it occurred on the same day that the exchange filed for bankruptcy, its CEO resigned, and new board members were appointed. Miller had categorized the event in in the first instance as “anomalies” that were being investigated.This is in relation to the ongoing consolidation of available balances.

“Following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, FTX US and FTX.com initiated precautionary measures to move all digital assets into cold storage. The process was accelerated this afternoon — to mitigate the damage from observing unauthorized transactions,” the executive added.

At the time of publication of this article, the cause of the hack is not known. It has not yet been determined whether an external agent perpetrated the hack or whether it was an internal movement.

A long drama in the world of cryptocurrency

The hacking and theft of funds from FTX is the latest development in a series of events that began last weekend. On Saturday, Nov. 6, Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao announced that he would be dumping his holdings in the TLT token, FTX’s native cryptoasset, due to “recent revelations,” according to reports by reported CryptoNews.

After the “CZ” comment, FTX’s situation has spiraled into a scandal-plagued turn of events. The exchange is accused of using its users’ funds for offshore transactions and is now being investigated by regulators in the United States and other parts of the world.