On October 7th, a hacker who had attacked the HTX exchange at the end of September returned the entire 4,999 ETH that they had previously stolen from the platform.
According to Lookonchain, the hacker sent back the cryptocurrency to HTX’s hot wallet through two transactions, along with a message that read: “Received your message. Please send the whitehat reward to address 0x1Fc8674A51D6b97C968BE384337519CE7003152B. Your system’s private key for the hot wallet has been compromised. Please change the hot wallet address and reduce the number of hot wallets.”
It is known that the action to return the stolen cryptocurrency occurred shortly after HTX’s negotiation efforts with the hacker.
Following the attack on September 25th, HTX quickly contacted the hacker and initiated negotiations. The exchange announced that it would reward the hacker with a 5% bug bounty if the funds were returned before October 2nd. Additionally, HTX threatened to reveal the hacker’s identity and report the incident to authorities after the deadline.
Currently, there are several theories regarding the hacker’s identity and the method of the attack on HTX. Some hypotheses suggest that the responsible individual may have had internal knowledge, possibly being a former or current employee of the exchange. However, as of now, there has been no official confirmation from the involved parties.
Nevertheless, according to transaction records on Etherscan, HTX transferred a 250 ETH reward (5%) to the hacker.
This recent incident marks the first time in its 10-year history that HTX (Huobi) has experienced a security breach that resulted in losses for its users. Fortunately, the situation had a relatively positive outcome for both the exchange, its users, and the hacker.