An incident occurred at Crypto.com in which several users of the crypto trading platform noticed weird activity taking place in their accounts. Though the firm acknowledged the incident and took immediate action it denied that any misappropriation of funds took place in the accounts of the users. However, two of the blockchain auditing firms are of the view that some funds have been misappropriated from the accounts of users maintained with the crypto firm.
On 17th January 2022, some of the users of Crypto.com complained of weird activity occurring in their trade accounts. On the complaint of the users, Crypto.com immediately enquired into the matter and acknowledged that the accounts were experiencing strange activities. Resultantly, the firm immediately suspended withdrawals and activated a task to look into the matter and get rid of the problem.
After the investigation, Crypto.com made a statement in which it said that suspicious activity took place in various accounts. However, the funds in those accounts remained safe and none of them were misappropriated. Thereafter, the crypto trading firm advised its users to reset their 2-factor security codes and asked them to re-log into their trading accounts.
Later on, some users reported that they couldn’t reset their security codes while some reported they couldn’t log into their accounts. Upon further complaint, the firm tightened security measures further and addressed the complaints of users facing problems. Subsequently, after an interval of 14 hours, withdrawals were restored and a report regarding the incident was published under the authorization of the firm’s CEO, Kris Marszalek.
The CEO of the firm re-affirmed that no misappropriate of funds had taken place during the incident. He further stated that a full-fledged investigation will be carried out to examine what was the actual cause of the suspicious activity. However, the claims of the firm as well as of its CEO, have been denied by a few blockchain auditing firms such as Peckshield and Certik.
Peckshield for instance suggested that collectively crypto funds amounting to more than US$ 15 million had been misappropriated. The auditing firm alleged that unidentified individuals carrying out suspicious activity stole 460,000 Ether coins. It further claimed that half of these Ether coins have been converted into other digital currencies through a crypto app called “Tornado.cash”.
Certik, which is the other auditing firm, too agreed to what was suggested by Peckshield. The firm also denied Crypto.com’s statements that none of the funds were misappropriated. In fact, Certik too believes that a loss of US$ 15 Million has been caused to Crypto.com, which the firm is denying for some reason. Certik even went on to state that it has already prepared a list of Crypto.com’s users from whose accounts funds had actually been misappropriated. According to Certik, a total of 282 accounts were the victims of suspicious activity that took place on 17th January 2022.
