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 Postmortem Hack and CEO Comments
Crypto.com on Thursday revealed the number of users affected by unauthorized crypto withdrawals that occurred on January 17 and stolen cryptocurrencies. 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 Bitcoin price is $42,083.95 and the Ether price is $3,178.94 based on data from Bitcoin.com Markets. Therefore, the value of the BTC and ETH stolen in 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 have collectively spent the last few years building a very robust infrastructure,” which he says has many 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 the incident was a big lesson and his company will continue to strengthen its infrastructure.
Regardless of the funds stolen, the CEO noted:
It should be remembered that given the scale of the business, these numbers are not particularly meaningful and customer funds have never been 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 Global Account Protection Program (WAPP) that Crypto.com announced with the post-mortem on Thursday. The company says the WAPP “provides additional protection and security for user funds held within the Crypto.com app and 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 have not seen any intervention 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.
