A hack is currently underway on the FTX exchange, the day after the company declared bankruptcy and Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO. It is strongly recommended that you uninstall the FTX mobile application and do not access the official website of the exchange until all the facts are known.
FTX cryptocurrency exchange gets siphoned off
The cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which has been declared bankrupt under Chapter 11 in the United States, is currently undergoing a massive hack worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the origin of which remains unknown at the time of writing.
Particularly suspicious money movements were identified early this morning, with sums in the tens of millions of dollars all emanating from the company’s portfolios.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are now flowing out of FTX wallets, some speculate liquidators but it’s late on a Friday night, not typical times for such rapid heavy movements. Some withdrawals are being swapped from Tether to DAI. Hack or insider actions? $26 million here pic.twitter.com/8wWlaE7na9
– foobar (@0xfoobar) November 12, 2022
” Hundreds of millions of dollars are now flowing out of FTX portfolios, some speculating on liquidators, but it is late on a Friday night, which is not the usual time for such rapid and large movements. Some withdrawals are swapped from USDT to DAI. Hack or insider action? $26 million here. “
The breach is officially confirmed at 5:52am by FTX support team member Rey on the exchange’s dedicated Telegram channel:
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” FTX has been hacked. The chat is open. Do not go to the FTX website as it may download trojans. Note that some funds have been recovered. “
After multiple transfers, the hacker’s wallet is worth over $375 million at the time of writing.
What we know now
According to Steven, research director at The Block, funds began to be transferred from the company’s official wallets to a single address early in the night.
FTX’s bankruptcy process appears to be starting as funds from both international and US wallets are being sent to 0x59abf3837fa962d6853b4cc0a19513aa031fd32b pic.twitter.com/hJ2JOTTMjj
– Steven (@Dogetoshi) November 12, 2022UVXW
According to him, at this stage, 3 people or groups would currently be operating on the detected transactions: the hacker(s) (blacklisted by Etherscan), a probable white hat and a multi-sig wallet possibly also white hat.
At the time of writing, the hacker(s) would have succeeded in generating gains of up to 10 million dollars by taking advantage of a method of slippage on various tokens.
Some of the addresses used to transfer funds or even some transactions with messages referring directly to Sam Bankman-Fried, such as “fucksbf” or “fuckftxandsbf.eth”.
At around 8am (Paris time), Tether blacklisted approximately $31.4 million related to the hack in the form of USDT. As a result, these funds can no longer be transferred by the hacker(s).
Many people have pointed to the synergy of the hack’s various operations, particularly with regard to the fact that the hack involves both FTX and FTX.US, which are two completely different and dissociable entities. Thus, rumours are circulating that the hack originated directly from within FTX’s inner circle.
Furthermore, prior to this whole affair, FTX was a platform renowned for its high level of security and has never had to suffer the damage of any hack.
