Here's a rundown of exchanges that have been hacked since 2011:
I wanted to share this list of exchanges that have faced hacks. After checking out the info, think about how and where you keep your Bitcoins. There are tons of scams out there, like theft or losing BTC on a personal level, which you probably see reported in the news often.
I’m mainly focusing on exchange hacks since it affects all of us, but I’ll also mention some notable Bitcoin thefts that happened outside these platforms because they matter too. If anyone has had a personal brush with any of these incidents, feel free to share your story.
Since 2011, exchanges have lost millions to hacks, account takeovers, security flaws, and phishing schemes. Some of them bounced back, while others went belly up. Governments are stepping in with stricter regulations to boost security.
This list covers exchanges that got hacked from 2011 to 2018. Fingers crossed I won’t need to add to it this year. Honestly, 2019 was a rough one.
In 2020, I refreshed some info and gave the way I present these incidents a makeover. I’ve got more references from various sources now, and when I cross-checked them with my own notes, it gave a clearer picture of the exchanges that suffered attacks. So, I’ve organized the info by year to make it easier to see what happened each year.
The sources I used are mainly online sites and social media that warn about hacked exchanges. Once I confirm an incident, it gets added to the right year’s list.
- List of exchanges that have suffered an attack in alphabetical order:
All the exchanges we have in the thread that have been hacked.
The amount of stolen Bitcoins is very high, it's a lot of money, some advices, do not enter into paranoid mode, just follow common sense:
How to save your Bitcoin
- Last Updated official OS + Antivirus
- Clear browser cache.
- Everything connected by cable.
- Activate 2FA + Backup (Exchange).
Wallets
- Software: Bitcoin Core, download in official page, encrypt wallet.dat + backup.
- Hardware: Buy in manufacturer's page, Trezor, Ledger, Keepkey, just install manufacturer firmware updates.
- Paper: Paper Walet generate the offline address.
- Cryptosteel: backup private key or seed.
- All backups outside of the computer.
Phishing
- Not accept links, mails, social networks to exchange, update wallets or firmware.
- Attention to web addresses and domain extension.
2022 >
2023 >
2024
2025
This is very bad, to here that exchanges are been hack by some set guy it very sad. However, my view by the exchanges hack is that most time that this happen some set of people that have access to the data base of the exchanges link those guys that hack the exchanges. Let everybody be careful this coming new year. Best of luck to all traders.
Damn. I did not expect that Poloniex was a victim of hacking. I just find out that Poloniex was hacked in 2014 and suffered a loss of $64K from you.
I have never stored my assets on an exchange. Because I realized that cybercrime is in anywhere and can attack anyone.
Before that happened to me, I anticipate it by buying Trezor hardware wallet and storing Bitcoin within it. Perhaps, the right way to keep Bitcoin safe is storing Bitcoin on hardware wallet like trezor and or ledger.
500 mil $ hack in 2018? Damn. I dont know how I missed it. Thanks for sharing.
Im daytrader so i need to store my bitcoins on exchange but i withdraw profit every 0.2 btc.
2018 is really a history itself. Not because it is about to end but because of the endless mischief that happens all throughout the year.
Great profits, I wonder why you share that info What's the point LOL
I'm sure there are plenty more small hacks of major exchanges and hacks on small lesser known exchanges that go unreported. There are also probably quite a few scams in there that are reported as hacks - BitGrail for example. I haven't followed the story in several months, but last I checked it seemed like the owner exit scammed with millions of dollars worth of Nano, said that he had been "hacked" to try to avoid the law, and there was a class action lawsuit against him.
Still, the total of your listed hacks comes to over $1.3 billion, and so the real value is likely to be even higher than that. The only coins that you should store on an exchange are coins you are actively trading. Anything you are not trading, or buying to hold, should be immediately transferred out to a private (non-web) wallet.
Op said:
As daytrader im affected a lot because i have to store my coins on exchange. I take a risk and withdrawing profit is a way to minimalize this risk. Thats why i shared this. And you can't say that this is great profit because i didnt say how often i'm withdrawing my profit. I only said that btc amount is indicator to withdraw. It might be once a year or once a day
The real scary part is how the numbers increased like crazy at the end there. I mean we all remember when cryptsy and mt.gox got hacked and lost a bunch of bitcoins (well "hacked" but I think they have it) but in the end if you look just 2018 hacked places and how much they were hacked, it is just double the rest in on year probably.
It is really getting out of hand because hackers probably realized that they are literally taking money governments are not caring about so its getting easier for them to steal bitcoin, it would be a lot harder and riskier if they hacked people to get dollars but hacking for bitcoin is better for them.
About 800 million dollars! was stolen this year, that is really crazy to think someone has that much crypto currencies as a person (or a group) and they got it scott free without any punishment.
Its not the only reason why they are stealing bitcoins. Its easier for them because crypto exchanges has weaker security, U can easily make them disappear - (transfer to new exchange, buy monero (private untrackable coin than even FBI wasnt able to track) for it, tranfer to monero wallet, to next monero wallet, back to another exchange, sell for bitcoin, withdraw bitcoins). And you have bitcoins on your wallet that noone know from where they are. While stealing USD from bank account you need to transfer them to your bank account where you gave ID to create it (I didnt see anywhere bank that didnt need ID to create account).
It is also easy to steel bitcoin from detail users because lots of them dont know the technology, how to store or even transfer coins. I heard that more than 10% airdrop participants give in forms etherum private key instead of public ... lol ... and then they loose coins and say "i was hacked".
People in the know should give a bit more information about each individual hack if they know some background. People may learn from it.
For instance the $500 million Coincheck hack was down to the exchange operators keeping ALL of the stolen funds in a hot wallet. Literally none was elsewhere.
XEM was the currency stolen. XEM has multi sig actually built into its blockchain. It costs nothing, it's a piece of piss to implement, it would've made this hack impossible, yet they chose not to do it. Even if they couldn't be arsed to do that, had they spent $100 on one Trezor this hack would not have been possible.
That's the calibre of people operating exchanges.
80% of the money stolen was their own. The customers got paid back.
And folks should be made aware of Bter. That is now Gate.io. Bter claimed to have had their hosting compromised and then resolved to pay back customers the 7000 or so BTC nicked with some sort of token funded through trading fees. They eventually got bored of that, gave up and were miraculously reborn as gate.io. Presumably the same people are still running it.
Was binance hacked? I remember that there was some doubt as to what had actually happened. But many consider that it had been hacked and some users lost a lot of money. There was Syscoin, too.
https://medium.com/@AnthonytXie/a-thorough-investigation-of-the-binance-hack-dc588cd0c2f5
https://www.ccn.com/bitmain-sues-mystery-bitcoin-thief-who-hacked-its-binance-account/
Whoa! I didn't know that Coincheck was the first one to go on the top list of biggest stolen cryptocurrency in the world and now MtGox is in the second place. Some of these exchanges has a very low security of storing their tokens on a secure wallet. That's why it is too easy to hack most of them. I wonder what would the thief could do to that stolen tokens if it is being listed on the watch list.
to be honest, I never knew that Mt Gox was an exchange, because I thought it was like a Financial Institution. And more surprisingly, the record of Mt Gox in terms of hacking is truly astounding. Have those who have been in it never learned about the importance of security exchange that must be truly fulfilled? very sad for victims of hacking the exchange above.
When it comes to convenience and volume, ie greed, people are only too happy to throw their doubts away.
Gox was still recommended on the main Bitcoin sites when I first got properly interested in 2013. I spent five minutes researching it - hacked before, passwords revealed in the browser address bar, shutdowns and rollbacks, unregulated in a country thousands of miles from me, who's the guy on the beach ball? - and I went straight to Localbitcoins instead.
Mt. Gox is a popular exchange before, some insinuating that its an inside job. Exchanges are target of hackers nowadays since it handles bigger volumes. Investment on online security is a must for this exchanges so that it can win trusts from its clients.
From all that list it means someone who said if we put our money on exchanger, that means we not have control for it anymore. Maybe that is what people want to said, maybe it is bad if we put all our money in exchanger.
Poloniex was a textbook example of how to proceed.
The owner at the time (Tristan) sent out messages explaining the situation. The lost coin for each user was shown in the dashboards, but not accessable. Eventual repayment was promised, and this was done in small increments, as and when profits allowed. Not sure, but I think the total was greater than the 64k quoted.
Thus, the exchange continued to trade and was solvent, whilst establishing a trustworthy reputation..
I see may exchange were hacked above, even poloniex hacked too.
Do you think this hacking problems will happen again next years ? if yes we must warn the exchanger dev's to make us comfy while we leave our money inside.
I am not big trader in the big market, but loosing money by hacked is hurt than you feel.
Im really surprised to see that some exchanges are showing up more than twice on the list 😣🤥. So they get hacked and they never bother to check on how it all happened and also fixing their website and increasing their security. This is why anyone shouldnt store their coins on exchanges,, they are a big risk. Really bad.