Hong Kong’s CyberSecurity Division Opens Special Investigations to Address DragonEX Hack

The DragonEX exchange informed its community on this past Sunday that it had suffered a significant hack and an undisclosed amount of cryptocurrencies were stolen. DragonEX had initially said it was ‘updating its system,’ but has since confirmed that its security had been breached and funds were lost. Some of these funds have apparently been retrieved, but the situation remains unclear. The exchange has notified authorities in Estonia, Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong about the cybercrime. It has just come to light that Hong Kong’s cybersecurity division will be collecting evidence to investigate the hack. It is the first announcement of a formal investigation into the matter by any government body. The exchange wrote in a public statement:

“We’re assisting policemen to do the investigation. All platform services will be closed and the accurate assets loss recovery situation will be announced in a week. For the loss caused to our users, DragonEx will take the responsibility no matter what,”

The investigation will audit assets lost, investigate the evidence, and assess the movement of funds and to which wallets they were transferred. The DragonEX exchange also submitted a report to China’s mainland police in case they are able to assist with the criminal investigation. As of now, some of the stolen assets have successfully been frozen, but the exchange said that the majority of them are ‘still flowing fast.’ The stolen digital assets included Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP, Litecoin (LTC) and EOS, as well as the stablecoin Tether (USDT). In a public statement addressing the matter, DragonEX exchange also thanked Coinbene, Gate, Bitmart, OKex, Huobi, Binance, Bittrex, and Bitforex for showing their support and doing their best to prevent the stolen funds from circulating. DragonEx is expected to release a statement disclosing the amount stolen and details on the investigation sometime this weekend or early next week. How detrimental do you think this hack was for DragonEX? Will any of these funds be recovered, or is it a lost cause? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!