GateHub, a cryptocurrency wallet service, recently suffered a security breach that made hackers steal 23.2 million XRP tokens from its users, worth nearly $9.5 million. It is reported that part of the funds have already been laundered.
According to a statement posted on the platform’s website, the security breach is still being investigated, although it’s believed the attacker abused GateHub’s API to siphon users’ funds out of their wallets.
“We have however detected an increased amount of API calls (with valid access tokens) coming from a small number of IP addresses which might be how the perpetrator gained access to encrypted secret keys.”
To be able to move the funds, the hacker would’ve had to decrypt the secret keys. According to GateHub, the API calls don’t explain how the attacker was able to get the information required to do so.
A group of XRP community members working to prevent scams on the cryptocurrency’s blockchain, XRP Forensics, revealed in a Medium post that a history of suspicious transactions was found and that the hackers used 12 XRP addresses to collect the funds.
A member of the group, Thomas Silkjær, wrote:
As of writing this report, 2019-06-05 16:00 UTC, we gather that ~23,200,000 XRP has been stolen from 80-90 victims, of which ~13,100,000 XRP have already been laundered through exchanges and mixer services.
The funds were reportedly laundered through various exchanges, including Binance, HitBTC, Exmo, KuCoin, and Huobi. The majority of the funds were laundered through Changelly.
XRP Forensics was also unable to determine how the hackers managed to steal the XRP from GateHub accounts.
Remember that Komodo platform recently hacked itself for $13 million to move funds from unsafe wallets, before hackers could get to them.