UpBit Hit By $3.4 Billion Fake Aptos (APT) Token Scam

South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit, is grappling with a major security breach that has sent shockwaves through the cryptocurrency community. This is after the exchange discovered earlier on Sunday, that a fraudulent deposit had been made into its platform, with scammers successfully passing off a fake coin as the legitimate Aptos (APT) token.

Upbit Hit by Scammers

The shocking breach was uncovered when Upbit’s system mistakenly identified the fake coin as APT, allowing a bot to deposit a substantial quantity of the counterfeit tokens into numerous user accounts, Korea based media outlet “Web 3 Builders” reported.

The scale of the breach was staggering, affecting an estimated 100,000 accounts, all of which held APT deposits. Notably, the total value of the fake APT tokens amounted to a staggering $3.4 billion, making this one of the largest cryptocurrency security breaches in recent memory. There were also reports of numerous Korean users coming forward claiming that they received APT tokens without initiating the transactions themselves.

In response to the breach, Upbit took immediate action to protect its users by suspending APT deposits and withdrawals, citing the need for wallet system maintenance

“Due to the maintenance of the Aptos (APT) wallet system, we are suspending the Aptos (APT) deposit and withdrawal service. We will resume deposits and withdrawals once the maintenance is complete, and we will update the service resumption through this notice,” the exchange wrote in a statement to users.

Behind the Scenes, How Scammers Did This?

On social media, South Korean crypto specialist and co-founder of TUNABOT, “Mingmingbbs,” helped in uncovering crucial details about the breach. The pundit’s investigation revealed that the fake APT tokens were not even the native Aptos Network coin but rather a fraudulent token named “ClaimAPTGift.”

According to Mingmingbbs, the problem arose because Upbit’s system did not properly check the type of coins being transferred, mistakenly treating all coins as the same APT token. Normally, it should have checked specific conditions, like whether the coins matched a certain type. Thankfully, a disaster was avoided because the scammer’s token had a different decimal system (6) than the real one (8). This prevented users from receiving $25,000 instead of $250, which could have caused “significant disruption.”

That said, despite the incident, investors have remained unfazed, pumping APT and dismissing the news as typical FUD. At press time, the Aptos price is trading at $5.42 after surging just over 5% over the past 24 hours.

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Sunil is a serial entrepreneur and has been working in blockchain and cryptocurrency space for 2 years now. Previously he co-founded Govt. of India supported startup InThinks and is currently Chief Editor at Coingape and CEO at SquadX, a fintech startup. He has published more than 100 articles on cryptocurrency and blockchain and has assisted a number of ICO’s in their success. He has co-designed blockchain development industrial training and has hosted many interviews in past. Follow him on Twitter at @sharmasunil8114 and reach out to him at sunil (at) coingape.com

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