Bitrue Hack

TOTAL LOST $5.0M
Medium Access Control

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2019 Incident surface
Recovered $5.0M 100.0% returned
All-Time Rank #422 By amount stolen
Protocol Type CEX Target category

Incident Overview

Singapore-based crypto exchange Bitrue has suffered a major hack, losing 9.3 million XRP and 2.5 million cardano (ADA) from its hot wallet.

At the time of the breach — 1 a.m. GMT+8 June 27 — the stolen funds would have been worth over $4.5 million in XRP (valued at $0.488) and $237,500 in ADA (valued at $0.095), according to CoinMarketCap data.

The exchange states that a purportedly single hacker first “exploited a vulnerability in our Risk Control team's 2nd review process to access the personal funds of about 90 Bitrue users,” subsequently using this first experience to access the exchange’s hot wallet and steal the cryptocurrency.

Any user accounts that were affected by the breach have had their assets replaced

This is classified as a Access Control Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Bitrue
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Access Control
Classification CeFi
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2 View Post-Mortem #3

Protocol Information

Protocol Type CEX
Official Website www.bitrue.com/home/?cn=200020
Protocol Twitter/X @BitrueOfficial
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

What the Attacker Needed to Succeed

Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.

Technical Knowledge Operational-security tradecraft (phishing, malware, leaked seed phrases, or insider access) to obtain treasury signing authority
Capital Required Minimal capital - only enough to cover gas while draining the compromised accounts
On-Chain Access Valid signing authority over the compromised wallets / multisig signers, allowing direct transfer of funds or stake authorization
Target Reconnaissance Identification of Bitrue's high-value treasury accounts and the authority / multisig structure controlling them
Execution Speed Speed to drain the compromised accounts before the team detects the breach and revokes signing authority or freezes the assets
Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Likely — with a thorough Access Control audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Bitrue, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (June 2019).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Access Control are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control Attacks attack class for patterns
  • Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Funds Recovery

100.0%

Recovered

$5.0M

Net Loss

0

Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Access Control Attacks examples →

Access Control Attacks

Sources & References

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