Crypto.com has revealed that 483 user accounts were compromised in the recent hack that resulted in unauthorized withdrawals of about $34 million in cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether. Nonetheless, the company stressed that customer funds were never at risk.
Crypto.com’s Hack Postmortem and CEO’s Comments
Crypto.com revealed Thursday the number of users affected by the unauthorized crypto withdrawals that occurred on Jan. 17 and the cryptocurrencies stolen. The company wrote:
The incident affected 483 Crypto.com users. Unauthorized withdrawals totaled 4,836.26 ETH, 443.93 BTC and approximately US$66,200 in other currencies.
At the time of writing, the price of bitcoin is $42,083.95 and ether is $3,178.94 based on data from Bitcoin.com Markets. Therefore, the value of BTC and ETH stolen during the hack is over $34 million.
The CEO of Crypto.com, Kris Marszalek, commented on the security breach on his platform in an interview with Bloomberg Wednesday.
Noting that his company invests heavily in cybersecurity, he detailed, “We have 200 professionals around the world who collectively spend the last few years building a very robust infrastructure,” which he said has multiple layers.
“In this particular incident, some of these layers were breached,” he admitted. However, he pointed out: “We were back up and running in about 13, 14 hours, and during the same day, all the accounts that were affected were fully reimbursed, so there was no loss of customer funds.”
Marszalek said that the incident was a great lesson and his company will continue to strengthen its infrastructure.
Regardless of the funds stolen, the CEO noted:
One has to remember that given the scale of the business, these numbers are not particularly material and customer funds were never at risk.
Marszalek was then asked what Crypto.com is doing to make sure that a security breach like this does not happen again in the future. The executive replied, “There are additional layers of security that we are implementing as well as some new programs.”
One of the new security measures is the Worldwide Account Protection Program (WAPP) which Crypto.com announced Thursday with the postmortem. The company claims that the WAPP “offers additional protection and security for user funds held in the Crypto.com app and the Crypto.com exchange.” The program restores funds up to $250,000 for qualified users.
Since the Crypto.com exchange is based in Singapore, Marszalek was asked whether he has been contacted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the country’s central bank, which regulates the crypto sector in the country. He replied:
At this stage, we did not see any outreach from the regulator.
“We are a regulated business in multiple jurisdictions so we expect this and we are putting together a report that we will share whenever an inquiry comes in,” the Crypto.com executive concluded.
What do you think about the Crypto.com hack and 483 accounts compromised? Let us know in the comments section below.
