Over 346B Shiba Inu Stolen as Justin Sun’s HECO Bridge Suffers $83M+ Hack

The HECO bridge from Justin Sun’s HTX, formerly Huobi, has suffered a massive hack, leading to the loss of over $83 million in crypto assets, including 346 billion Shiba Inu.

The exploit occurred this morning when on-chain analytical systems began flagging suspicious movements from the HECO cross-chain bridge.

Justin Sun, founder of the crypto exchange HTX, confirmed the development in a recent post on X, assuring that the exchange will cover any losses the hot wallet has incurred.

It bears mentioning that the official HTX account on X has not made any statement on the hack as of press time. Rather, the team leveraged their official Telegram account to announce a temporary closure of deposits and withdrawals on the platform. 

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According to Sun, the recent event will not affect customers’ funds on HTX. He emphasized that the HTX team is currently investigating the cause of the exploit, noting that they would resume services, including deposits and withdrawals, once they complete their investigation.

Details of the Hack

Meanwhile, prominent on-chain surveillance resource Lookonchain shared details of the hack in a post on X. Lookonchain revealed that the exploiters made away with up to $83.4 million worth of eight crypto assets. 

On-chain data confirms this disclosure. Notably, data suggests that the first outflow from the HECO bridge occurred today at 9:59 (UTC), involving 10,145 ETH worth $20.4 million. 

The hackers continued to withdraw more assets over the course of 16 minutes, with the single largest transaction amounting to $42.1 million worth of USDT. One of the withdrawals saw an outflow of 346,867,120,000 (346.8 billion) Shiba Inu tokens valued at $2.75 million at 10:11 (UTC). 

The other assets include 489 Huobi BTC (HBTC) worth $15.63 million, $932,000 worth of Uniswap (UNI), $610,000 in USDC, $347,000 in TUSD, and 42,399 Chainlink (LINK) valued at $600,000. The combined value of the tokens stands at $83.4 million.

All the stolen assets moved to a central address associated with the hacker. From this point, the hacker then converted them all to 41,434 Ethereum, and moved them to other addresses.

A Recurring Pattern

Interestingly, the recent HECO bridge hack is the third exploit affecting entities affiliated with prominent crypto figure Justin Sun over the past two months. Notably, in late September, Sun’s HTX exchange suffered a hack that resulted in the loss of $8 million. Sun confirmed this in a tweet.

In addition, Poloniex, a prominent exchange in which Sun holds majority stake, also fell victim to an exploit on Nov. 10, which saw the hackers move $120 million worth of multiple assets. On Nov. 18, Sun gave the exploiters a seven-day ultimatum to return the funds and get $10 million or risk the involvement of authorities.

Now, with the ultimatum not yet over and the funds still missing, the HTX HECO bridge, a product of the HTX ecosystem, has also suffered another hack. The recent slew of exploits has raised concerns and speculation among industry commentators.