Decentralized peer-to-peer network Mixin Network has fallen victim to a major security breach, resulting in the loss of approximately $200 million in crypto assets. The hack, which occurred on September 23, exploited vulnerabilities in a third-party cloud service provider’s database.
Mixin Network officially confirmed the hack on September 25, acknowledging the theft of around $200 million worth of cryptocurrency assets from its mainnet. In response, the network immediately suspended all deposit and withdrawal services to contain the situation.
To investigate the breach and aid in recovery efforts, company enlisted the expertise of blockchain investigator SlowMist and tech giant Google. At the time of the hack, they held a substantial cryptocurrency portfolio, including $94.48 million in Ether (ETH), $23.55 million in Dai (DAI), and $23.3 million in Bitcoin (BTC), as revealed by PeckShield’s separate investigation. The total value of the assets compromised stood at $141.32 million.
Further investigation by the Web3 SaaS analytics platform 0xScope unveiled the hacker’s prior interactions with Mixin Network. In 2022, the address 0x1795, which has since been linked to the hacker, received 5 ETH from Mixin Network, which was subsequently deposited into Binance. The future plans for recovering the lost assets on behalf of affected users have not been immediately disclosed.
While it was initially anticipated that Mixin Network founder Feng Xiaodong would address the incident in a public Mandarin livestream scheduled for 1:00 pm Hong Kong Time on September 25, links to the livestream were not provided through official social media channels, including X (formerly Twitter), or the network’s official website, mixin.network. The crypto community awaits further updates and actions to mitigate the impact of this significant security breach.
