Crypto.com, a leading Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange and digital wallet which has 10 million account holders in the US alone has experienced an incident when some of its customers were reported for unauthorized strange activity in their accounts. The wallet temporarily shuts down all deposits, transactions, and withdrawals operations.

The exchange acknowledged the event, underwent an investigation immediately after the incident, and declared that all funds were safe. The accounts in which the activity took place were configured with two-factor authentication (2FA), which the crypto.com exchange asked users to reset and sign in and out of accounts. Later, security and blockchain auditing firms Certik and Peckshield Inc. alleged around $15 million worth of Ether had been removed from users’ exchange wallets. Although it is still not clear how the hackers got past Crypto.com’s security.

Crypto.com said “Earlier today a small number of users experienced unauthorized activity in their accounts. All funds are safe. In an abundance of caution, security on all accounts is being enhanced, requiring users to sign back into their App & Exchange accounts [and] Reset their 2FA”.

“Our team has hardened the infrastructure in response to the incident,” the Crytpo.com statement said and promised to go for a full post-mortem after an investigation was complete.

In some cases, customers were not able to reset their two-factor authentication keys (2FA), and they were unable to access the exchange as a result. As soon as the exchange resumed withdrawals, Kris Marszalek, CEO of Crypto.com, released a report regarding the incident, stating that the withdrawal infrastructure was offline for a total of 14 hours. The exchange now introduced a new security measure that during the first 24 hours after registration, customers will not be able to withdraw from whitelisted addresses.

Ben Baller who was a UK-based crypto influencer initially said that 4.28 Ether (ETH) which is nearly $14,000 has been stolen out of his account. Later he claimed that an additional $16 million worth of cryptocurrency was taken out.

Billy Markus along with being a big name in the crypto community also the creator of Dogecoin, alleged to have witnessed unusual activity on a crypto.com Ethereum wallet 

Indrani bose

CBW - External Analyst

INDIA