KuCoin hack: Hacker makes away with over $22k, details inside

• A hacker made away with more than $22,000 after gaining access to KuCoin’s Twitter account.
• The issue has since been resolved and the exchange is taking additional measures to beef up security.

A hacker walked away with more than $22,000 earlier on 24 April after hacking the Twitter account of the crypto exchange KuCoin for a brief period of time.

The compromised Twitter account promoted fake activity in a bid to take money from users. The exchange has clarified that the extent of the hack was limited to the social media platform and had not reached the trading platform. 

KuCoin will compensate affected users

According to an update posted by KuCoin on Twitter, the exchange’s social media account was compromised for 45 minutes from 00:00 (UTC+2) earlier today (24 April).

Twitter’s support team reportedly helped KuCoin regain control of its compromised account. However, users reported asset losses due to the hacker’s actions during that time. 

The exchange has assured reimbursement for all verified asset losses caused by the social media breach. The exchange further assured that all assets on the exchange were secure and accounted for. 

Within two hours of the hack, KuCoin’s team identified 22 transactions including ETH and BTC, associated with the hacker’s activity.

The total value of the transactions was $22,628. The exchange is in the process of examining and blocking all suspicious addresses in order to protect its users from further harm. 

In this regard, KuCoin tweeted:

“In addition to Twitter’s existing 2FA, the KuCoin team will implement additional security measures to fortify the protection of our social media accounts. We are also conducting a thorough investigation of the incident with Twitter to prevent similar occurrences in the future.” 

The mishap and confusion with KuCoin’s Twitter account had a visible impact on the exchange’s KCS token, which has lost more than 2% of its value. The token is currently trading at $8.