British Crypto Exchange Lykke Shuts Down Trading after Suffering an Attack

Lykke, a prominent crypto exchange in the United Kingdom, has recently stopped trading operations. As per the company, it has done this after suffering an exploit due to a security breach on the 4^th of June in which it reportedly lost $22M. The platform disclosed its latest endeavors in its recent posts on the social media forum X.

Lykke UK and Lykke Corp AG (Lykke) suffered an attack on their infrastructure on June 4. The affected systems were immediately shut down to limit damage. The identified security breaches have been thoroughly examined and fully addressed.

— Lykke✨Zero-fee crypto exchange✨ (@lykke) June 10, 2024

A UK-based crypto Exchange Closes Trading Operations after Experiencing an Exploit

As per the reports, the attacker exploited the private keys. Following this incident, the crypto exchange immediately shut down its trading operations on the 6^th of June. To justify the move, the firm pointed toward an “unauthorized access.” This development took place a couple of days following the exploiter hacked its security systems. In the previous month, the crypto exchange witnessed a cumulative volume of up to $2.5 million.

The consumers of Lykke are presently unable to redeem assets from the company. Many of them pointed out that the account balances thereof got emptied. This provides another indication that some party has hacked the crypto exchange. Fifty percent of the sum comprised Bitcoin while the rest included Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Ether. Onchain statistics also reveal that the exploiter instantly swapped the Ether tokens to the stablecoin DAI.

Simultaneously, the attacker has divided the Bitcoin tokens among diverse wallets. This is a usual tactic that the exploiters use to obscure the transfer trail while attempting to launder funds. The platform has not provided significant details about the event. On the 6^th, Richard Olsen (the chief executive officer of Lykke) sent an email to the consumers. In that email, the executive apologized for the company’s downtime.

The CEO Claims that the Client Funds Are Safe

As per the executive, the firm is still doing research on the potential causes of the respective security breach. Meanwhile, Olsen has assured the consumers about the safety of their funds. He added that the company possesses a diversified business containing resilient capital reserves. The website of the platform presently shows a message that it is going through maintenance after the incident.

The platform asserted that its internal investigation had detected the attacker’s IP addresses. Moreover, the company has also contracted a cybersecurity forum to block as well as recover the assets. The closure of trading operations plays the role of a preventive measure while the operations will reportedly remain closed until further notice.