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Saturday, September 26, 2020 at 14:00 UTC

KuCoin

Hot wallet keys leaked; most assets frozen by issuers.

Recovered
Funds stolen
$281.00M
Recovered
$240.00M85%
Still outstanding
$41.00M
Chain
Ethereum
Category
CEX
Attack vector
Private Key Compromise
Reported by
SlowMist
Incident ID
h2020-3

Exploit & recovery timeline

  1. Sep 26, 2020 · 12:00 UTC
    Attack preparation

    Attacker wallets funded and staged ahead of the private key compromise exploit against KuCoin.

  2. Sep 26, 2020 · 14:00 UTC
    Exploit executed

    $281.0M drained from KuCoin on Ethereum via Private Key Compromise.

  3. Sep 26, 2020 · 15:00 UTC
    Detected by SlowMist

    SlowMist flagged the anomalous transactions and published an initial alert.

  4. Sep 26, 2020 · 18:00 UTC
    Protocol response

    KuCoin paused affected contracts or withdrawals and began tracing outbound flows.

  5. Sep 27, 2020 · 14:00 UTC
    Funds traced

    Stolen assets followed through mixers, bridges, and exchange deposit addresses.

  6. Oct 3, 2020 · 14:00 UTC
    Full recovery

    $240.0M returned to users — negotiation, freezes, or a whitehat return closed the incident.