Deribit hot wallet hacked, withdrawals paused

User’s funds weren’t affected but this attack is part of a worrying trend.

Crypto options and futures exchange Deribit tweeted yesterday that its Bitcoin, Ethereum and USD Coin hot wallets were compromised, with $28m being drained.

The company specified that the loss will be covered by its insurance fund and in a subsequent tweet, Deribit explained that user deposits and withdrawals will be paused as the company is “performing ongoing security checks”.

Deribit also addressed already sent deposits, explaining that they “will still be processed and after the required number of confirmations, they will be credited to accounts”.

It’s important to note that the number of minimum confirmations has been raised, which has caused an expected delay in crediting those funds.

“Deribit remains in a financially sound position and ongoing operations will not be impacted”, the company said.

Given that user funds weren’t affected, and the transaction pause is temporary, crypto twitter’s reaction in the replies mostly boiled down to chalking this one down as “another attack”.

CoinDesk dubbed October “the worst month for crypto hacks” a couple days before the middle of the month.

On October 12, analysts from the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said: “October is now the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity.”

TRT World released a similar report on October 18, which cited 125 hacks which were worth more than $3bn. Almost – but not quite – a third of those were October’s $700m+ losses.

Overall, 2022 was very close to 2021’s $3.2bn before October even ended, and the latest $28m mean 2021’s final figures loom ever closer.

To be fair, more than half a billion can be counted just from the attack on Binance, which received an update towards the end of October.

All of this hacker activity makes training the police in cybercrime, as well as strengthening cybersecurity as important as ever.

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Written by Kyamil Nasuf

Reporter

Kyamil is a big tech fan, who loves hummus on everything and has enjoyed writing from a young age. He's had experience in writing anything from essays, through personal art, to news pieces and more serious tech analysis. In recent years he’s found fintech and gambling collide with all his interests, so he truly is a great fit to our team.