Cryptocurrency exchange platform in Singapore gets hacked

Experts from the best ethical hacking institute, jointly with the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) report an alleged hack against DragonEx, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange platform. According to the first investigations, the losses amount is about $6M USD.

At first, some DragonEx officials released the news through a Telegram chat group, highlighting that the virtual assets would have been stolen and transferred to other online wallet addresses.

As a security measure, the platform closed its operations on a temporary basis and began a maintenance process after discovering the hacking incident, the experts from the best ethical hacking institute mentioned.

Among the virtual currencies that the threat actors managed to steal from DragonEx are units of Bitcoin, Ethereum and EOS, among other less popular virtual assets.

According to some sources, the message that circulated in the Telegram chat group of the DragonEx operators mentioned: “the virtual assets of our users guarded on our platform have been stolen and transferred to other accounts. Some of these assets have been recovered and we will continue to work to recover the rest of the compromised cryptocurrencies. Authorities in Thailand, Hong Kong, Estonia and other territories have been informed. DragonEx will temporarily interrupt its operations and the incident shall be disclosed in the coming days.

Experts from the best ethical hacking institute mention that, after some cybersecurity firms investigated the incident, the calculations for the losses exceeded a little the 6 million of dollars initially calculated. DragonEx’s teams have recovered about 1 million dollars so far.

In Addition, DragonEx has called on other members of the cryptocurrency community: “We seriously request for help from all exchange platforms, we need to investigate and track the stolen assets, freeze them and stop their flow between platforms”. 

Platforms such as Huobi and gate.io have already detected some of the stolen assets and, following DragonEx’s request, stopped their use; DragonEx has also published a list of the addresses to which some of the stolen assets have been transferred.