In the latest hack of cryptocurrency exchanges, Italian platform “Altsbit” has been hacked to its hot wallet, which was completely emptied by suspected cybercriminals.

Almost all the money was stolen from the platform

announced Altsbit Corporation announced the news of the hack through a tweet published on Thursday, February 6, 2020, stating:

Dear users.

Unfortunately, we have to tell you the fact that our platform was hacked during the evening and almost all the funds from Bitcoin, Ethereum, ARRR and VRSC were stolen.

Only a small portion of the money remains safe because it is stored in cold wallets.

Read:Gang who stole $800,000 of Ripple (XRP) has been arrested in South Korea

Dear users,
Unfortunately, we have to notify you of the fact that our exchange was hacked during the night and almost all of the BTC, ETH, ARRR and VRSC funds were stolen.
A small portion of the funds are safe on cold wallets.

Altsbit February 6, 2020

From the platform’s announcement, it appears that Altbits kept a large portion of its funds on hot wallets, causing most of the funds to be lost.

Altbits has not yet provided a full report and accounting for the total amount of theft.

However, from the total of the published tweets, it can be estimated and said that hackers stole 1,066 KMD tokens and 283,375 VRSC coins.

The total value of all stolen coins is around $27,000.

In the past days, Altsbit’s trading volume was around $14.8 million over 24 hours with 98% of its trading activity coming from the ARRR/BTC trading pair (the original token of the Pirate Chain).

Trading platforms reduce the risk of hacking

In response to the news of the hack, some decentralized platform (DEX) proponents have highlighted weaknesses in decentralized platforms.

Read:Project Swipe announces $16 million bounty for BNB holders

Although centralized exchanges still have a larger trading volume than decentralized platforms.

As for the security situation with centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, the 2020 Chainalysis report shows that exchanges appear to be better equipped to deal with hackers.

Despite the increase in the number of hacking incidents, Chainalysis reported that the total amount stolen in those attacks decreased significantly from previous years.

Read:Binance Labs leads a $12 million investment round for a crypto wallet… Details here

One of the main defensive strategies adopted by crypto exchanges is to limit the value of coins stored in hot wallets.

Thus, barring any internal interference, hackers are less able to steal large amounts of cryptocurrency.

According to some recently published reports, the “Lazarus” group is suspected of being behind many attacks on trading platforms in the Asia-Pacific region.

The group uses social media phishing software such as Telegram to withdraw cryptocurrency from victims:

North Korea used LinkedIn and Telegram to hack cryptocurrency exchanges

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A South Korean security agency expects more exchange hacks in 2020