AscendAE, which is based in Singapore and was previously known as Bitmax, announced that they got hacked – apparently a hacker gained access to one of their hot wallets and made off with some 77 million US dollars. According to a statement by the company, the exchange then transferred assets that were not affected by the hack to cold wallets and began an investigation. They also assured everyone affected by this breach in security that they would be fully compensated. They also stated that they detected a number of unauthorized transactions from one of its hot wallets on December 11th. At this point news about exchange hacks are not even surprising any more, and I think that is pretty concerning.
I agree. It happens much more often than it should - frankly, it shouldn't be happening at all - and I find that very disturbing.
And you're right, it is very disturbing. Especially since any exchange can claim a hacking when it probably is an inside job. Stick to the well known reputable exchanges for the best security. Binance, Coinbase, Kraken. And these exchanges will even refund any hacked funds since they have stored funds for this very reason. When you do things properly in the crypto space then there is really nothing to be disturbed about.
I guess that is what happens when your hot wallet is protected with username=username, password=123456. That's how wallets generally work, yes? The ole username/password thing?
What is happening around? Even the exchanges are not safe from breaches, leave alone individual trader accounts.
This is business as usual. 3rd tier exchanges get hacked here & there, DeFi protocols getting hacked here & there. Grim Finance just got recently hacked for $30mil, that was a fun sh*tshow to observe. That's the risk you take with holding funds on any CEX. Ascendex is crap anyway, the only value they offer that I last remember was being a Polygon bridge. They've added more L1 bridges as well, and I think Arbitrum also. But aside from that, it's just a 3rd tier exchange with fake liquidity & barebones customer support. If you got caught holding funds on there, oh well.
An exchange should take security measures to protect from hackers and It seems Ascendex exchange did not so hackers hacked it easily.
They really messed up. You'd think that after all the hacks that have already happened they'd take it more seriously, but no.