CoinBene Exchange Allegedly Loses Over $100 Million in Suspected Hack
Summary #
CoinBene, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, reportedly suffered a security breach on March 25, 2019, resulting in the loss of over $105 million worth of various tokens and coins. The exchange denied being hacked and claimed it was undergoing maintenance. CoinBene has not provided any official statement regarding the incident.
Attackers #
The identity of the attacker remains unknown. The following addresses were involved in the hack:
- 0xA1BF1ED1e8DE34477fB3dCE27c2eA2EA4163AcbA
- 0xb3dF999C5dC026dea265AEB02b8519844C9b6D5E
- 0xba351e7f0c630b3baa30a0ff38f6f4a333ef2133
Losses #
CoinBene lost $105,150,329 worth of various assets. Breakdown of top 5 stolen assets by value:
- $70,738,770 worth of Maximine Coin
- $14,252,973 worth of CoinBene Coin
- $4,744,863 worth of Guaranteed Ethurance Token
- $2,693,476 worth of Huobi Pool Token
- $2,575,313 worth of Ethereum
Timeline #
- March 20, 2019: Bitwise’s presentation to the SEC mentioned suspicions of wash trading on CoinBene.
- March 25, 2019, 06:58 PM UTC: The first malicious transaction was executed with 16,730 ETH being transferred.
- March 26, 2019, 00:05 AM UTC: A hacker started selling Maximine Coins on EtherDelta.
- March 26, 2019, 06:20 AM UTC: CoinBene announced that the platform was undergoing maintenance due to upgrading the platform wallet. The tweet was deleted later.
- March 26, 2019, 01:29 PM UTC: Crypto expert Nick Schteringard said on Twitter that the exchange’s users reported their wallets being hacked and provided the attacker’s address.
- March 27, 2019: Data scientists at Elementus issued a report suggesting that the fund transfers out of CoinBene’s hot wallet reached approximately $105 million.
- April 9, 2019: PeckShield, a blockchain security company, published a report stating that the stolen funds were transferred to centralized exchanges, including Binance, Bittrex, Huobi, and OKEx.
Security Failure Causes #
Compromised Wallet: The exact cause of the security breach remains unclear, but it is suspected that the hot wallet was compromised, allowing the attacker to transfer funds to his own wallets.