Upbi Attacked By Hackers More Than 159,000 Times In The First Semester Of 2023

Upbit, has been the target of hacker attacks more than 159,000 times (photo: twitter @Official_Upbit)

JAKARTA - South Korea's cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit, has been targeted by hackers more than 159,000 times in the first half of 2023.

The figure was reported by Dunamu, a company that owns and operates Upbit, to Park Seong-jung, a representative of the South Korean People's Power Party, as reported by Yonhap News Agency on October 9.

The report showed an increase of 117% compared to the first half of 2022 and a marked increase of 1,800% compared to the first half of 2020.

Upbit is one of the largest CRYPTO exchanges in South Korea, with a 24-hour trading volume of around 1.2 billion US dollars (Rp 18.7 trillion), according to CoinGecko. Other major crypto exchanges include Bithumb, Coinone, and Gopax.

To counter hacking attempts and strengthen security, Dunamu said that Upbit had increased the proportion of funds it holds in its cold wallet to 70%. Upbits are also increasing security measures for funds stored in hot wallets.

Hot wallets tend to be hacked more often than cold wallets because their personal keys are stored online, in contrast to cold wallets where the keys are stored offline on external hardware and USB.

According to a Dunamu spokesman to Yonhap, Upbit experienced exploits of 50 million US dollars (Rp782.4 billion) in 2019. However, since then, Upbit has not experienced any security breaches.

"After the hacking incident in 2019, we took various measures to prevent it from happening again, such as distributing hot wallets and operating them, and to date, no cyber violations have occurred," the spokesman said.

However, Upbit had to shut down the Aptos token service by the end of September after its platform failed to recognize fake tokens, "ClaimAPTGift.com," which reached 400,000 Aptos wallets.

Seong-jung admits that crypto hacking has increased overall but urged the South Korean government to take further action.

"The Ministry of Science and Technology must conduct large-scale mock tests and investigate information security conditions in preparation for cyber attacks on virtual asset exchanges where hacking efforts often occur," said Seong-jung.

"The role of the Ministry of Science and Technology in their management and supervision is still vague," added Seong-jung.

Meanwhile, crypto exchanges have been the target of a series of attacks in September. Hong Kong-based exchange CoinEx experienced a 70 million US dollars hack in September after one of the company's personal keys was compromised. The company stated that affected users would receive compensation for the lost funds.

In a separate attack, Huobi Global's HTX exchange lost 7.9 million US dollars (Rp123.6 billion) in exploitation on September 24.