After a Thursday attempted attack, Hotbit, a crypto exchange platform, has shut down all its services.
Around 08:00 PM UTC a serious cyber-attack was suffered by Hotbit and which led to paralysis of many of its basic services according to notice on its website.
There was an unsuccessful attempt by the hacker to gain access into the wallets of Hotbits, but the platform’s user database was compromised. Customers have been advised by the Hoptbitz team, to discountenance any communication from platforms that claims to be representing them.
With all normal operations currently paused during the ongoing maintenance, Hotbit also revealed that pending trading orders are canceled to prevent losses. Also, the exchange promised to bear any losses stemming from exchange-traded funds listed on its platform during the duration of the maintenance.
According to the Hotbit announcement, the maintenance will last for at least seven days with reports that the investigation and system upgrade could take as long as two weeks.
Addressing users on the exchange’s Telegram group, Alex Zhou, chief security officer of Hotbit, revealed that user funds were unaffected by the attack, stating: “The attacker tried to break into the wallet server to steal funds but the action was identified and blocked successfully by Hotbit risk control system. All users’ funds are safe.”
“At the same time, Hotbit is in the process of transferring all funds in hot wallet to cold wallet, the details of the whole integration could be seen on the chain,” he said.
Indeed, data from Ethereum transaction monitoring tool Etherscan shows multiple token outflows from one of Hotbit’s known wallets to another address that currently holds about $14 million in several altcoins.
However, the length of time given for the maintenance is causing significant unrest among Hotbit users judging by comments on social media and in the platform’s Telegram channel.