Over $1M Worth of Stolen Crypto Returned to Eterbase. Other Refunds to Follow?

On Friday, November 12, Slovak cryptocurrency exchange Eterbase received 600,000 MATIC returned to its wallet. This sum was part of the recovered crypto that was stolen during the Eterbase hack in September 2020. It was returned by swap exchange and crypto processing service ChangeNOW, as confirmed by its blog post.

Having filed for bankruptcy, Eterbase is looking to similar returns from Binance and Huobi, Robert Auxt, the exchange’s co-founder, said in his recent Tweet. 

Many thanks to ChangeNOW. Wonder why big players like Binance and Huobi cannot do the same. @cz_binance @HuobiGlobal https://t.co/Xe50yEf0tb

— Robert Auxt (@AuxtRobert) November 15, 2021

Eterbase Hack: Timeline of Events  

On September 7, 2020, Eterbase’s hot wallets were compromised, as the exchange itself announced on the next day. However, it was likely the hackers gained access to the exchange some days prior to the funds being stolen to retrieve the private keys. The aggregated amount of the stolen funds was approximately $5.4 million across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other altcoins at the time of the hack.

Eterbase said that it detected the attack but it was unable to block it. The stolen crypto, which was stored in hot wallets where the private keys didn’t require multiple signatures by the exchange to sign outgoing transactions, went to several addresses, as reported by the exchange. 

According to an investigation conducted by Zero Friction, a US-based cyber and blockchain security consulting company, the tokens associated with the stolen crypto were liquidated through several decentralized finance services and exchanges. 

The key money flows indicated by the red arrows. Source: https://www.zerofriction.io/

Zero Friction said it is very unlikely for the exchange to recover the funds that were sent to decentralized services.