Inside Job Suspected As Huobi Wallet Falls Victim To $263,000 Exploit
October 07 2023 - 7:40AM
NEWSBTC
According to multiple reports, iToken, formerly known as Huobi
Wallet, fell victim to a crypto heist in the last week, leading to
the loss of $263,000 worth of users’ assets. The incident draws
much attention following recent police investigations into some of
Huobi’s former staff. Related Reading: TRON’s Justin Sun Reassures
Crypto Community That Huobi Exchange Is Solvent $263,000 Drained
From Huobi Wallet – Could There Be An Internal Involvement?
Providing more insight on this latest exploit, prominent security
firm Peckshield reported that this event occurred on October 3,
with the drainer stealing a total of $263,000 USDT and 92 TRX
minted on the Tron network. Thereafter, the bad actor proceeded to
swap these stolen funds for approximately 2.9 million TRX, of which
1.4 million TRX was transferred to the ChangeNOW exchange, and 1.5
million TRX was moved to Binance. Currently, there are
speculations that this heist was orchestrated by the internal staff
of Huobi as such development would be unprecedented. In September,
the Chinese Police were reported to have arrested a former Huobi
team member for implanting a Trojan horse virus that resulted in
the exposure of the private keys and mnemonic phrases of some
iToken users. Launched in 2018, iToken functions as a professional
DeFi wallet, which enables the storage of various digital assets
across multiple networks. It was initially known as the Huobi
wallet, as earlier stated, but was rebranded iToken in 2022,
following a $200 million investment from the Huobi Group. Related
Reading: Tron’s Justin Sun Mulls Over Making A Move On FTX’s Crypto
Stash, Here’s Why Growing Controversy Around Huobi? In
addition to speculations of insider involvement in this recent
heist, Huobi, now rebranded as HTX, has been in the news recently
and not for positive reasons. On September 25, the exchange fell
victim to a hack that drained 5,000 ETH worth $7.9 million.
However, the exchange’s advisor and Tron founder, Justin Sun, soon
came out to assure users of total asset recovery and security of
the exchange’s operation. However, this week, crypto expert
Dylan LeClair wrote a thread on X accusing the Tron Visioneer of
creating a “web of deception.” This marks the second time in recent
weeks Justin Sun has been accused of malicious dealings involving
users’ assets on Huobi. According to LeClair, ever since Sun
acquired a controlling stake in Huobi in late 2022, the amount of
USDT held on the exchange has been gradually replaced by stUSDT, a
receipt token for staking USDT. The stUSDT token is controlled by
Justin Sun and is supposedly designed to invest in real-world
assets such as US government bonds. However, LeClair stated that
on-chain analysis and transactions show no such investment.
The crypto analyst also drew attention to “worrying” transactions
by Justin Sun involving JustLend, a Tron-based DeFi lending
platform, and other stablecoins, including USDT and USDC,
before concluding that the Tron Founder is maliciously moving USD
liquidity out of the crypto space. At the time of writing,
HTX’s native token, HT, hovers around $2.36 with a 0.74% gain in
the last day, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Meanwhile, HT’s
daily trading volume is up by 10.64% and is valued at $3.47 million
HT trading at $2.34 on the hourly chart | Source: HTUSDT chart on
Tradingview.com Featured image from Bloomberg, chart from
Tradingview
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