More than two days after a hack forced Crypto.com to suspend withdrawals, the Singapore-based exchange shed light on the case, which is not likely to reassure investors who are reluctant to invest in crypto.
In a blog post, the company said that unauthorized withdrawals totaled 4,836.26 ethereum, 443.93 bitcoin - equivalent to roughly $15.8 million and $19 million respectively, at Jan. 17 exchange rates - and approximately US$66,200 in other cryptocurrencies.
The company, which has more than 10 million customers and is one of the most prominent crypto platforms in the U.S, also said that 483 Crypto.com users were compromised.
"On 17 January 2022, Crypto.com learned that a small number of users had unauthorized crypto withdrawals on their accounts," the company said.
"Crypto.com promptly suspended withdrawals for all tokens to initiate an investigation and worked around the clock to address the issue. No customers experienced a loss of funds. In the majority of cases we prevented the unauthorized withdrawal, and in all other cases customers were fully reimbursed."
Crypto.com also elaborated on the events.
"On Monday, 17 January 2022 at approximately 12:46 a.m. UTC, Crypto.com’s risk monitoring systems detected unauthorized activity on a small number of user accounts where transactions were being approved without the 2FA authentication control being inputted by the user.
"This triggered an immediate response from multiple teams to assess the impact. All withdrawals on the platform were suspended for the duration of the investigation. Any accounts found to be impacted were fully restored."
Some users have made their displeasure known to Crypto.com on social media. A user, who claims not to have been reimbursed yet, accused crypto.com of lying.
Crypto.com invited the user to reach out for assistance, and said: "We will be happy to help"
Another user claims to have still not heard back from Crypto.com.
To prevent further attacks of this style, Crypto.com has decided to migrate its two-factor authentication system to a new architecture and users will also switch to a new system.
This hack and Crypto.com's fuzzy communication is not good news for the crypto sphere, which is increasing its efforts to lead to a wide adoption of digital assets. The volatility of cryptocurrency still puts off many investors and Main Street.
