GateHub Suffers A Hack Costing Nearly $10 Million In XRP

GateHub, a cryptocurrency wallet service has reportedly suffered a hack, compromising nearly 100 XRP Ledger wallets, as per a preliminary statement released by GateHub on June 6.

GateHub reveals in their statement that some customers and community members have reported that funds have been stolen from their wallets. The estimated amount that hackers managed to compromise around 100 XRP Ledger wallets.

Initially, the platform did not identify any nefarious activities and when the firm began an investigation on the matter, it discovered an increased application programming interface (API) calls coming from a small number of IP addresses.

This could be purportedly the way the hacker got access to encrypted secret keys. Thomas Silkjær, one of the community members who warned GateHub about the breach, published a report on the hack, revealing that:

“On June 1 we were made aware of a theft of 201,000 XRP … and immediately started investigation. It turned out that the account robbed was managed through Gatehub.net, and that the offending account (r9do2Ar8k64NxgLD6oJoywaxQhUS57Ck8 k) had stolen substantial amounts from several other XRP accounts, likely to be or have been managed through Gatehub.net.”

As per Silkjær,   approximately 23,200,000 XRP (nearly $9.5 million at press time) were stolen from 80–90 victims as of June 5. A staggering number of which, 13,100,000 XRP ($5.37 million) has been already laundered through exchanges and mixer services.

GateHub notes that investigation is still being conducting, which is why they cannot post any official conclusions.

Chainalysis, a blockchain intelligence firm claimed earlier this month that  64% of ransomware attack cash-out strategies involve the laundering of funds via cryptocurrency exchanges. 

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