Cybercriminals Make Off with $200 Million in Cryptocurrency Heist Targeting Mixin

Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency firm Mixin revealed a significant security breach on Sunday, reporting the theft of approximately $200 million. The attack targeted the database of Mixin Network's cloud service provider on September 23, 2023.

In response to the breach, Mixin temporarily suspended deposit and withdrawal services, with plans to reopen them once vulnerabilities are identified and resolved, following consensus among network nodes.

Mixin has enlisted the assistance of Google and cryptocurrency security company SlowMist to investigate the breach. The company describes its product, Mixin Network, as an open and transparent decentralized ledger maintained by 35 mainnet nodes, serving as a decentralized exchange and cross-chain network for digital asset transfers. As of July, Mixin claims to have one million users.

The details of how hackers managed to exploit the vulnerability in Mixin's cloud database remain unclear, raising questions about the security of decentralized systems. Google's incident response subsidiary, Mandiant, is actively involved in supporting Mixin's response to the breach.

The announcement also mentioned that Mixin intends to unveil a solution to address the stolen assets at a later date.

This hack represents the largest cryptocurrency theft in 2023, surpassing the previous record held by Euler, a crypto lending platform that suffered an attack resulting in a loss of approximately $197 million in March, according to data from Rekt, an organization tracking hacked cryptocurrency entities and projects.