Cryptocurrency trading platform Poloniex has lost over $100 million worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum after hackers compromised its hot wallet.
Various wallets across multiple blockchains appear to have been targeted. According to Arkham data, an Ethereum wallet sent a total of $116 million worth of tokens from Poloniex in 357 transactions. A wallet on the Tron blockchain also sent more than $42 million to various wallets.
Poloniex said it would pay 5% of the stolen amount as a bounty to the hacker in exchange for the return of the funds.
The platform’s investor Justin Sun had acknowledged the hack on X (former Twitter) and said that the company managed to identify and freeze a portion of the stolen funds and that “at present, the losses are within manageable limits.”
An analysis conducted by X-explore, a market research platform, suggests that the Poloniex hacking incident was likely carried out by the North Korea-backed threat actor Lazarus Group, known for its large-scale crypto thefts.
