Huobi Gloabl recovers 8 million in stolen ETH

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Huobi Gloabl recovers 8 million in stolen ETH

Huobi Gloabl's cryptocurrency exchange has recovered millions in stolen funds from a hacker who absconded with them in September after making contact with the attacker and negotiating a deal to see it returned.

Justin Sun, a Huobi Global investor and HTX adviser, took to Twitter on Saturday to announce that 8 million in stolen Ether was restored and that the hacker made the right choice to accept HTX's offer.

On September 25 HTX revealed the hack that occurred when one of the exchange's hot wallets was hacked and drained 5,000 ETH.

Sun told customers that the amount was a'relatively small sum' compared to what he said was HTX's $3 billion in assets. Sun also said at the time that HTX would offer 5% of the stolen ETH as a 'white-hat reward' to encourage the hacker to return the funds, but warned that the firm would contact law enforcement if the offer was not accepted within a week.

Despite the fact that some crypto firms have been left negotiating with hackers to get stolen funds back, law enforcement agencies have opted to assist in the process. In more than one of these deals, the firm and the hacker reached an agreement where the majority of the funds were restored and a bounty is then paid to the hacker to close things out.

Crypto exchange hacks are a persistent risk, but the type of exchanges targeted have differed.

In the second quarter of 2023, there was a 63% surge in blockchain hacks compared to the same time last year, according to a report published by Immunefi. The company also found that most of the hacks happened on DeFi platforms, which lost $228 million in 79 incidents. By comparison, centralized exchanges like HTX-only lost a reported $37 million in two incidents.