Four Former Huobi Employees Sentenced for Major Crypto Theft

Chinese authorities have revealed that four former employees of the prominent cryptocurrency exchange Huobi were involved in a major theft of crypto assets.

The employees in question – Zhang, Dong, Liu, and Zhang Yi – used Trojan horse viruses to infiltrate wallets, resulting in the theft of over 40,000 user reminder codes and private keys. The exact amount of stolen cryptocurrency has not been specified.

This theft took place prior to Justin Sun’s acquisition of Huobi, which was formerly the largest cryptocurrency exchange in China.

According to Ping An Xuhui’s official WeChat account, the employees inserted a backdoor into the virtual currency wallet software in early March 2023 to access user private keys. After recording the stolen keys and associated wallet addresses, they destroyed the server and database. They intended to use these private keys in two years to unlawfully access users’ digital currencies.

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Three of the suspects managed to alter over 19,000 digital wallet addresses by unlawfully obtaining more than 27,000 reminder codes and over 10,000 private keys. In April 2024, the Xuhui District People’s Court sentenced Liu, Zhang A, and Dong to three years in prison each, along with a 30,000 yuan fine for their role in illegally acquiring computer system data.