Experts interviewed by The Block said that DPRK hackers were involved in the hack of Phemex for $70 million

The exchange announced that the withdrawal function would soon be restored

24.01.2025 - 12:00

2 min

What’s new? Singapore-based crypto exchange Phemex lost more than $70 million in a hot wallet hack on January 23. The attack affected the exchange’s assets in the BNB Chain, Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, Base, Bitcoin, and TRON networks, which the attackers started converting into ETH for further laundering.

Material by The Block

What else is known? By the time the attack was detected by third-party IS companies, the amount of losses was lower and Phemex suspended withdrawals to fix the vulnerability and conduct verification, but this did not prevent further leakage of tokens.

First of all, the hackers exchanged USDT from Tether and USDC from Circle for ETH stablecoins, as issuers can freeze assets involved in illegal activities. Also among the features of the attack is the fact that hundreds of different tokens were being withdrawn from multiple blockchains at the same time.

This suggests that the attack was carried out by a group of experienced attackers, noted MetaMask crypto wallet analyst Taylor Monahan in a comment to The Block.

An anonymous blockchain researcher under the nickname SomaXBT.eth claims the attack was carried out by hackers from North Korea.

Media report on the mass employment of DPRK developers in crypto startups

Since at least 2018, North Koreans have been infiltrating companies to make money in the face of sanctions, as well as organizing hacks

Phemex still holds about $1,8 billion worth of crypto assets, of which $1,1 billion is accounted for by the PT exchange token. The platform also holds $355 million worth of bitcoins and $209 million worth of USDT.

On January 24, the Phemex team said that withdrawal and deposit functions will be restored soon.

Source: X.com