HTX to restore services ‘within 24 hours’ after $13.6M hack

Crypto exchange HTX, formerly known as Huobi Global, has said it will resume deposits and withdrawals within 24 hours after suffering a $13.6 million exploit on Nov. 22.

In its announcement, the exchange promised to “fully compensate for the losses caused by this attack and 100% guarantee the safety of user funds.” In addition, it wrote, “The amount of funds lost by Huobi HTX this time accounts for a very small amount of the total funds of the platform,” noting that the “normal operations” of HTX were not affected by the incident. 

The day prior, Huobi suffered a $13.6 million hack to its exchange hot wallets as part of an orchestrated $86.6 million attack against the HTX Eco (HECO) Chain bridge, consisting of HTX, Tron and BitTorrent. All three entities are linked or de-facto controlled by Chinese blockchain entrepreneur Justin Sun. 

Like previous incidents, HTX stated that “protecting user assets and information security is our highest responsibility, and we will take all necessary measures to prevent such incidents from happening again.” Over the past two months, HTX and Sun-linked entities have been hacked four times. The largest was the $100 million Poloniex exploit on Nov. 10 caused by an apparent private key compromise. 

Sun has since stated, “We are investigating the specific reasons for the hacker attack. Once we complete the investigation and identify the cause, we will resume services.” A $10 million white hat bounty for the return of stolen funds in the $100 million Poloniex exploit remains open at the time of publication. 

Related: Huobi’s new name, HTX, raises community eyebrows