2023-09-25 11:37:54
Upbit, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea and 24th in the world by trading volume, is facing a major security crisis following a serious security breach involving the Aptos token (APT).
The security breach became evident on Sunday morning, when Upbit’s system misidentified the fake token as APT, allowing a bot to deposit substantial amounts of fake tokens into multiple user accounts.
As such, This incident affected approximately 100,000 accountsall of which contained APT deposits, resulting in one of the largest cryptocurrency security breaches in recent times. Total value of fake APT tokens reached $3.4 billion.
Meanwhile, many Korean users also reported receiving APT tokens without initiating transactions themselves.
Upbit Immediate Action
In response to the gap, Upbit took swift action to protect its users by suspending APT deposit and withdrawal services, alleging the need to perform maintenance on the wallet system. They said:
“We are suspending Aptos (APT) deposit and withdrawal services due to maintenance of the Aptos (APT) wallet system. We will resume deposit and withdrawal services once the maintenance is complete and will inform you through this announcement when the service resumes.”
Posteriorly, The cryptocurrency exchange stated that Aptos (APT) deposit and withdrawal services had resumed after the Aptos (APT) wallet system had been inspected and the stability of deposits and withdrawals had been confirmed.. He also stated that the action against the abnormal deposit attempt had been completed and that there were no problems with users’ Aptos transactions.
How did it happen?
A South Korean cryptocurrency expert, “Definalist”, played a crucial role in clarifying the gap. According to his investigation, the fake APT tokens were not genuine Aptos Network tokens, but fraudulent tokens with the symbol “ClaimAPTGift”.
Amazing Korean exchange upbit incident today
1. The Largest S.Korean exchange @Official_Upbit abruptly halted Aptos’ deposits and withdrawals, citing a wallet system maintenance without any specific reason
2. Various Korean users have posted authentication claiming that they… pic.twitter.com/OjfCwhB4eV
— Definalist (@definalist) September 24, 2023
They further explained that the issue arose because Upbit’s system did not check the type of tokens transferred and processed all tokens as the same APT token. Usually, the system should have performed specific checks to ensure that the tokens matched a given type.
However, disaster was averted because the scammer used a different decimal system for the token, preventing users from receiving $25,000 instead of $250, which could have led to a catastrophic situation.
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