Orbit Chain suffers hack attack, lost $82M 

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An international law enforcement agency joined the investigation to find the attacker behind the Orbit chain. 

Orbit Chain is a cross-chain protocol which facilitates cryptocurrency transactions between Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible networks and Klaytn. In 2018, this protocol was founded by a South Korean crypto entrepreneur. 

On 31 Dec 2023, Orbit Chain suffered a hack attack. An unknown actor accessed the Orbit chain & drained nearly $81.6 million worth of crypto assets from the protocol. 

On 1 Jan 2024, the Orbit chain reported this incident and also warned the Orbit chain users to remain away from fake Orbit chain X (Twitter) accounts for any kind of loss fund claim. 

So far security experts are investigating this incident to identify the route used by the attacker which helped him to breach the protocol. 

To freeze the stolen funds, the Orbit chain team requested all the major global crypto exchanges to freeze the funds if the attacker tried to transfer the funds through their corresponding platforms. 

In addition to private security investigations, the orbit chain team also got support from international enforcement agencies to catch the culprit behind this incident.

This protocol team confirmed that they are working on a plan to give compensation to all the affected users but it will take time. 

Individual crypto detectives said that 2024 started with this major hack attack and probably this is a very big hint that bad actors will drain billions of funds from this sector this year also.

In 2023, the crypto hackers & scammers made nearly $1.8 billion from this sector by attacking the crypto web3 platforms, & Defi protocols. The majority of the stolen funds were found linked with a highly popular North Korean government backed hacking group Lazarus. 

In Q4 2023, the hackers targeted crypto exchanges Poloniex, HTX (formerly Huobi Global), and Heco chain. Hacker drained more than $200 million from these platforms and notably, all three platforms belong to popular crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun.

Read also: MatrixPort Predicts Bitcoin will hit $50,000 in Jan 2024