Cryptopia, the New Zealand cryptocurrency exchange that was hacked on January 14, has undergone yet another substantial loss of funds from the same hackers, just 15 days later.
According to Elementus, a blockchain analysis firm keeping a close eye on the Cryptopia hack and divulging insights into what’s going on, the same hackers siphoned 1,675 ETH — amounting to $180,000 — from unsuspecting Cryptopia wallets on January 28, 2019.
1,675 ETH Stolen From 17K Cryptopia Wallets
As previously reported by IIB, the initial Cryptopia hack amounted to $16 million siphoned from Cryptopia wallets. Now, per the Elementus report, a total of 17 thousand wallets were affected in the latest attack. Out of these wallets, 5,240 of them had been cleared out by the first hack, meaning that that their owners deposited new funds even after being hacked.
Therefore, it would seem that the owners of these wallets are either completely unaware of the Cryptopia attack or thought its security failure had been resolved since then. Another explanation for the deposited funds is that they are automatically being deposited as payments from mining pools.
Cryptopia Has Lost Control of Their Private Keys to Their Ethereum Wallets
Elementus suspected Cryptopia had lost control of their private keys to the hackers in their last report, now this suspicion has been proven true. The most recent stolen funds have been moved to the same Ethereum address as the other stolen funds.
Per the report, Elementus stated:
“Initially, it wasn’t clear whether this might be Cryptopia securing their remaining funds, but by 9:50 PM this evening, it became obvious this was indeed the same thief. At that time, the incoming transfers stopped and the combined funds were moved into the address below, the same wallet that currently stores the other stolen Cryptopia funds.”
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Moreover, there is seemingly nothing that can be done to stop these hackers from siphoning funds out of Cryptopia users wallets. Users who continue to deposit their funds in these wallets will simply continue to lose their money, so if you’re a Cryptopia user who hasn’t checked your account lately… you are advised to do so post-haste.
Do you think the Cryptopia exchange will ever recover from this hack, or will they never re-launch again? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
