Team Freezes $1.77M in Stolen Assets Amid Ongoing Investigation

Upbit, the biggest exchange in South Korea, announced they had frozen assets linked to the recent hack of its platform. This was as the team continued findings into the theft and recovery processes of stolen assets.

Upbit Hack Update: $1.77M in Stolen Assets Now Frozen

Dunamu, the parent company behind Upbit, says it has frozen $1.77 million worth of compromised assets so far as its response to the incident continues. The theft caused the platform to go into lockdown. Users could not make deposits or withdrawals while the wallet system was fully upgraded.

The issue was discovered when unusual withdrawal patterns were found in wallets on the Solana network. The exchange confirmed that it covered the $26.2 million in stolen funds using its own corporate reserves, so no users had to face direct losses.

The security changes follow the Upbit hack last month in which an attacker stole nearly $38 million in Solana-based tokens to an external address. Among the assets were TRUMP, Bonk, and others. Several ecosystems were impacted in what is now recognized as a major Upbit hack event.

In response, the exchange set up its in-house OTS, short for On-chain Tracking Service. It is a system that traces every on-chain movement of withdrawn assets. The technology provides 24-hour surveillance of transfer routes. This helps the team identify linked wallets and quickly spot suspicious transactions.

When they find compromised addresses, the team blacklists them and shares this information with partner exchanges. The exchanges then freeze stolen funds right away.

As a result of this teamwork, they froze $1.5 million in assets within the first five hours of the incident. That figure has risen to $1.77 million with additional assistance from offshore exchanges.

Team Launches Global Recovery Contribution Program

The exchange has started a program to encourage people to help recover stolen funds. This program is for white-hat hackers, blockchain analysts, security researchers, and exchange operators. Anyone who helps find or freeze stolen funds will earn 10% of the amount successfully recovered.

“The customer’s damaged assets have already been covered by Upbit assets, but we are persistently tracking and freezing them to prevent them from being handed over to attackers,” and “We ask for the active cooperation of virtual asset exchanges and blockchain communities around the world to create a safe virtual asset ecosystem,” an official said.

The exchange restored full deposit and withdrawal services on the 6th after completely updating its wallet system and adding more security features.

During the review, Upbit found and fixed a serious security flaw in the wallet while investigating the hack. The exchange promised to share more updates as new information becomes available.