Upbit, South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was surprisingly thrown into chaos today after a flood of fake APT altcoins overwhelmed its system. The incident left users stunned and questioning the exchange’s security protocols. Here’s what we know so far…
Crypto exchange turned upside down due to altcoin
Definalist, a leading voice in the crypto community, published an article pointing out that the main reason for this fiasco was the lack of type parameters checking by Upbit’s wallet system. Fake APT tokens had 6 decimal places, while native APT tokens had 8 decimal places. This discrepancy allowed fake tokens to pass through the system undetected. If the fake APT tokens had matched the native ones in decimal places, users would have received $25,000 instead of the intended $250. This could have led to a mass sell-off, causing significant disruption in the APT market.
Amazing Korean exchange upbit incident today
1. The Largest S.Korean exchange @Official_Upbit , abruptly halted Aptos' deposits and withdrawals, citing a wallet system maintenance without any specific reason
2. Various Korean users have posted authentication claiming that they… pic.twitter.com/OjfCwhB4eV
— Definalist (@definalist) September 24, 2023
Reports have started coming in from various Korean users claiming to have purchased APT tokens without initiating any transactions. Upbit abruptly stopped APT deposits and withdrawals, citing a wallet system maintenance but without providing specific details. The situation got even weirder when Upbit’s customer center started calling users who sold fake APT tokens deposited and demanding refunds. It has become clear that the stock market is struggling with a crisis of trust and legitimacy.
fraud spree
What makes this situation particularly alarming is that the tokens deposited are not native APT tokens but a scam token known as ClaimAPTGift. This raised questions about the exchange’s security and due diligence processes. Upbit’s wallet system appeared to rely solely on checking the type and data of tokens, leaving it vulnerable to fake tokens like ClaimAPTGift.
Breaking: Upbit, South Korea's largest exchange, today identified fake APT tokens created by scammers as real APT tokens. Then robots deposited a large amount of APT into many user accounts. Upbit is calling users who sold fake APT to request refunds. Upbit also urgently…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 24, 2023
According to technical experts, the problem stems from the inability to distinguish between various APT ecosystem tokens. During the deposit process, the wallet system failed to properly check the type arguments and treated all tokens as the same APT native token. This technical explanation was made by Mingming, co-founder of TUNA BOT. The lucky aspect of this incident was that the native tokens had 8 decimal places while the scam tokens had 6 decimal places. This prevented a more disastrous outcome, as users only received $250 instead of $25,000. The Upbit incident serves as a striking reminder of the importance of robust security measures in the cryptocurrency industry.
54204
