South Korean crypto exchange Upbit has placed its deposit and withdrawal services into “emergency maintenance” following an “abnormal withdrawal situation.”
According to a Korean-language notice posted to Upbit’s website, assets worth a total of 44.5 billion Won ($30 million) were drained from a Solana hot wallet at 04:42 local time.
The incident marks the sixth anniversary of Upbit’s last major security incident, when 342,000 ETH was stolen. Worth around $50 million at the time, the stolen ETH would be worth over $1 billion today.
The 2019 heist was later attributed to the North Korean hacker collective Lazarus Group.
Read more: CHART: North Korea stole $2.8B in crypto hacks since 2024, report
This time, over 20 tokens are listed amongst those withdrawn, including SOL, USDC and TRUMP, as well as various Solana ecosystem tokens and memecoins.
An earlier version of the notice had estimated losses at 54 billion Won ($37 million) before an update with the revised amount was published shortly after 15:00 local time.
Oh Kyung-seok, the CEO of Upbit’s parent company, Dunamu, apologized for inconvenience caused by the urgent “service inspection.”
In a quote (translated from the original Korean), he claimed that Upbit “will cover the entire amount… to ensure that no damage is incurred to your assets.”
The statement notes that approximately $1.6 million worth of LAYER tokens have already been frozen. Upbit continues to trace funds in order to attempt further freezes, where possible.
If today’s incident is indeed a repeat attack by the Lazarus Group, the timing, which also coincides with a planned merger of Dunamu and Naver Financial, looks designed to cause maximum disruption.
Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.