Hong Kong crypto business Mixin says hackers stole $200 million in assets

A cryptocurrency business based in Hong Kong announced on Monday that hackers had stolen around $200 million of its assets after attacking its cloud service provider.

Mixin, which describes itself as building “open source software that always puts security, privacy and decentralization first” announced the incident in a social media post.

The company said that the breach took place on Saturday and that it has temporarily suspended deposit and withdrawal services as a result.

“These services will be reopened once the vulnerabilities are confirmed and fixed,” the company stated. Mixin's core offering is a network for transferring digital currency and similar assets.

The affected cloud service provider was not identified. In the company’s statement, it said it had contacted Google and a blockchain security company called SlowMist to investigate.

“Regarding how to deal with the lost assets, the Mixin team will announce the solution afterward,” the social media post added.

The incident comes just days after experts at the cryptocurrency-tracking company Elliptic said that North Korean hackers are the prime suspects in the theft of $31 million in cryptocurrency from the CoinEx exchange reported earlier this month.

Back in August, the FBI attributed three other recent attacks on cryptocurrency platforms to the North Korean government’s APT38 hacking group — known by many researchers as Lazarus or TraderTraitor.

Blockchain research firm Chainalysis found that 2022 was a banner year for hackers targeting cryptocurrency firms, with about $3.8 billion in total stolen from companies in the industry, up from $3.3 billion in 2021.

Chainalysis noted that much of the hacking activity was led by groups associated with the North Korean military, which has prioritized cryptocurrency hacks in an effort to fund its nuclear weapons program.