FTX Was Hacked and Now Its Apps are Viruses

FTX was hacked last night, and over $600M left customer accounts. Crypto analysts observed large amounts of ETH, SOL, USDT, and other tokens moving from FTX to DEXs, but it's unclear how much was stolen.

According to FTX.US's general counsel Ryne Miller, FTX and FTX.US were already planning to move their customers' funds to cold storage as part of FTX's Chapter 11 bankruptcy process. Miller says this “Process was expedited [...] to mitigate damage upon observing unauthorized transactions.”

FTX Was Hacked, the Money is Gone, and Everything Is a Virus Now

FTX's lawyer is calling them “unauthorized transactions,” but FTX's support telegram is calling it a hack. According to FTX customer support, the ftx.com website may infect visitors with Trojan viruses, and the FTX mobile apps are also considered to be dangerous. FTX users are advised to delete the FTX apps and stay away from FTX's websites.

Despite the warnings, some FTX users are logging into their accounts and finding they've been emptied. During the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's empire, there was a bank run on FTX and FTX.US. Users withdrew over $6B in just three days. The funds being stolen in this hack are what remained after FTX froze withdrawals.

Was the FTX Hack an Inside Job?

Many online observers believe the FTX hack was an inside job, due to previous insolvent CEXs experiencing inside job hacks on their way down. Supporting the inside job theory is crypto investor Umbrella's observations that the FTX hackers were not very good at getting out with the money. To begin with, they used DEX aggregators like 1Inch, which are not popular among hackers looking to dump large amounts of stolen crypto fast.

According to Umbrella, the hacker didn't use bots to minimize slippage when they sold off their stolen UNI, SHIB, and LINK. They just sold the full amount. The hacker also wasn't good at dumping stablecoins: Tether blacklisted $47M in USDT on Solana and Tron before the hacker could sell it, and on Binance Smart Chain, the hacker dumped $23M USDT tokens but got front run by trading bots and only captured $15M in the sale.

Let's just say that blockchain “specialists” are always prepared for hacks and dumps on Binance Smart Chain, so you'll want to use bots when you dump your $23M in stolen Tether.

Regardless of who is behind the FTX hack, one thing is clear: a lot of the remaining users are seeing zero balances in their accounts, and according to FTX it's not even safe to log in to check on your account balance.