GDAC

On April 9, 2023, GDAC, a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, was hacked, resulting in the theft of approximately $13 million in cryptocurrencies, representing 23% of its custodial assets, as reported by CoinDesk. Detected at 07:00 KST, the attacker gained access to GDAC’s hot wallet, transferring 60.8 BTC ($1.7 million), 350.5 ETH ($647,000), 10 million WEMIX tokens ($10.7 million), and 220,000 USDT ($220,000) to an unidentified wallet, per CoinDesk.

The hacker swapped USDT for ETH and laundered 461 ETH through Tornado Cash, per Arkham Intelligence. GDAC, with a $100 million daily trading volume per CoinGecko, suspended deposits and withdrawals, disabled wallet servers, and reported the incident to South Korean police, the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), per Twitter (@GDACofficial). CEO Han Seunghwan urged other exchanges to block suspicious deposits, but no funds were recovered by April 2023.

Twitter’s @WemixNetwork noted WEMIX’s cooperation in tracking stolen tokens. One of 295 crypto hacks in 2023, costing $2 billion, per Chainalysis, the incident, following Bitrue’s $23 million loss, highlighted hot wallet risks, prompting calls for cold storage prioritization, multi-signature wallets, and real-time security monitoring to protect centralized exchanges.