Japanese crypto-exchange 'Liquid' hacked, millions in crypto-currencies stolen

Japanese crypto-exchange platform Liquid has announced that some of its crypto wallets have been compromised, due to which the exchange has suspended all deposit and withdrawal operations.

They announced this suspension via a tweet that said, "We are sorry to announce that #LiquidGlobal warm wallets were compromised, we are moving assets into the cold wallet.

We are currently investigating and will provide regular updates. In the meantime, deposits and withdrawals will be suspended."

A cold wallet is kept offline and is more secure, whereas a warm wallet is available online and enables customers to access their crypto-assets instantly.

This latest attack on Liquid follows a similar attack last month on crypto platform Poly Network, in which over $600m in major cryptocurrencies was stolen.

Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm, reported that in this latest attack on Liquid, the hacker escaped with cryptocurrencies worth $94 million. This includes $30.9 million in ether, 12.9 million in XRP, $4.8 million in bitcoin, $7.7 million in stablecoins and $37.4 million in other tokens.

Interestingly, the Poly attack hacker returned some of the assets they stole and received a 'bug bounty' from Poly of $478,000 in return. However, Elliptic is concerned, that crypto-related ransom attacks could become more commonplace.

This isn't the first time Liquid has been breached; in November 2020, the exchange acknowledged a user data leak.