On 10 April, South Korean crypto exchange GDAC announced that they are halting the deposits and withdrawals due to the loss of $13 million in digital assets.
According to reports, hackers have stolen digital assets from the Hot Wallet and transferred $13 million to an unknown wallet. On 10 April, GDAC published a detailed report on the issue and informed about the digital assets theft. In the report, the exchange has apologized for the inconvenience caused due to the data theft.
According to the report published by GDAC, there are 60 BTC, 350 ETH, 10,000,000 WEMIX, and 220,000 USDT drained by hackers at 7 am on 9 April. It also added that this theft consists of around 23% of GDACs total digital assets under custody currently. Additionally, it added that the moment they received the news of hacking, the emergency team started working to manage the situation. Services like deposits and withdrawals are immediately suspended by the company to protect the interest of stakeholders.
When countries like South Korea, known for its advanced technology, are facing the problem of data thefts then it’s a matter of concern for all backward regions that are using digital assets ecosystem. However, to find the offenders and resume all platform activities, GDAC is actively cooperating with several organizations. In the notice released by GDAC, it said that they are taking help from Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) and requested their technical support. No timeline has been provided for when the suspension of deposits and withdrawals will be revoked. By providing information about the current situation, GDAC says, “We ask for your understanding that it is difficult to confirm the resumption point of deposit and withdrawal as the investigation is currently underway.”
GDAC is not the only exchange that faced asset drainage by hackers, a month ago, Decentralised Finance (DeFi), lender Euler Finance faced digital assets hack. Hackers have stolen worth $200 million digital assets from a flash loan attack.
South Korea has been very active in consumer protection, in March the parliament commenced its discussion for wide-ranging crypto regulations. Additionally, in the second half of 2021, the South Korean cryptocurrency market surpassed 55 trillion won (about $42 billion). Moreover, statistics suggest that there are over 15 million people worldwide that use cryptocurrency. Now it will be interesting to witness whether the authorities will be able to recover the stolen digital assets from the hackers or not, but clients will face problems due to the suspension of services.
