USDC worth $60 million was withdrawn from the HyperLiquid trading platform after a wallet address associated with a North Korean hacker allegedly initiated transactions on the platform. Experts believe these trades, which have accumulated losses of $700,000, are a test of weakness.
At the time of writing, approximately $60 million in USDC has been withdrawn from the HyperLiquid perpetual trading platform due to concerns that activity from North Korea-related wallets may precede the attack.
A wallet address associated with a North Korean hacker group began executing transactions on the Perp trading platform over the weekend.
An X user called Tay, who is familiar with cybersecurity and the activities of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) hacker group, said: The North Korean test suggests that these trades (albeit at a loss) were made in order for the hackers to familiarize themselves with HyperLiquid’s platform.
(LOL) @Risk to all you retarded people who think USG is forcing the freezing of hyperliquid, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Hey, North Korea doesn’t trade. North Korea inspection 🤦♀️
— Tay💖 (@tayvano_) December 22, 2024
HyperLiquid vulnerability
According to Tay, HyperLiquid Layer-1, the blockchain that powers exchanges and the EVM layer, currently has only four validators that can be accessed with a single line of code if a hacker can gain access in “0 days” .
My offer from 2 weeks ago is still valid @HyperliquidX
I’m happy to be able to do it asynchronously or via a call. If you don’t like me, you can give me one colleague who is very nice and happy.
But if we don’t pull ourselves together quickly, there will be great harm to people. pic.twitter.com/OxLlB4lygE
— Tay💖 (@tayvano_) December 22, 2024
A zero-day is a software vulnerability that is unknown to the developer or publisher and requires zero days to fix. Tay said North Korean hacker groups are highly sophisticated and are always on the lookout for zero-days.
The rise of hyperliquid
HyperLiquid is currently the largest on-chain perpetual trading platform with approximately 271,000 users, $12.14 billion in total deposits, and $6.2 billion in daily trading volume.
The platform launched its native token HYPE on November 29th, with the public price increasing from the list price of $1.97 to the current price of $27.97.
HYPE is currently the 22nd largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $9.35 billion at the time of publication.
