Upbit

On November 27, 2019, Upbit, a titan among South Korea’s cryptocurrency exchanges, suffered a seismic blow when hackers breached its defenses, absconding with 342000 ETH valued at approximately $50 million. Launched in 2017 and backed by tech giant Kakao Corp, Upbit had risen to prominence, handling $4.7 billion in daily trades across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple, per CoinMarketCap. The attack, detected through anomalous transactions in its Ethereum hot wallet holding $350 million in ETH, prompted an immediate suspension of deposits and withdrawals, as announced on Upbit’s website and reported by CoinDesk. Within hours, the exchange confirmed the theft, with funds traced to a single address on Etherscan, valued at Ethereum’s price of $146 per coin, per CoinGecko. Suspected to involve phishing and malware to steal private keys, the breach exposed Upbit’s reliance on vulnerable hot wallets, despite its robust reputation. Upbit swiftly transferred remaining assets to cold storage, covering losses with corporate funds to reassure users, a move lauded on Twitter by @CryptoKorea but met with skepticism on Reddit, where users like u/SeoulTrader questioned prior security lapses. South Korea’s Financial Services Commission tightened oversight, yet 2019’s regulatory framework yielded no fund recovery or arrests, with North Korean hackers later implicated, per Reuters. The hack, rippling through a market under intense scrutiny, eroded investor confidence, fueling demands for multi-factor authentication, routine security audits, and cold wallet dominance to fortify the crypto ecosystem’s resilience.