ZB.com halts deposits and withdrawals due to "technical issues", on-chain data shows hot wallet transferred out $5 million in advance.

The ZB.com exchange announced on 8/2 that its internal core program was malfunctioning, leading to the suspension of deposit and withdrawal services. However, a data security firm detected that prior to the service suspension, approximately $4.8 million worth of encrypted assets were transferred from ZB.com's hot wallet to a single address. The possibility of a hacking incident cannot be ruled out, and the exchange has not provided an official explanation.

8/2 Suspension of Deposit and Withdrawal Services

ZB.com described their platform as the "world's safest digital asset exchange" on Twitter. In the announcement released on 8/2, ZB stated that due to some core program malfunctions, deposit and withdrawal services will be temporarily suspended during the maintenance period to ensure the security of user assets.

ZB users,
Due to the sudden failure of some core applications, we’re currently responding to these issues.
To keep your assets secured, we have temporarily suspended Deposit and Withdrawal services while we resolve the issue.
We will provide an update once completed.
Thank you

— ZBExchange (@ZBexchange) August 2, 2022

8/1 Hot Wallet Asset Transfer

PeckShield detected that ZB.com's hot wallet transferred approximately $4.8 million worth of encrypted assets, including SHIB, USDT, and MATIC, to the same address on 8/1. The address has been tagged by Etherscan as "ZBExchange Hacker 1".

The on-chain data also shows that the address exchanged a large amount of encrypted assets through Uniswap V3 and 1inch.

As of the deadline, besides the initial announcement of the suspension of deposit and withdrawal services, ZB's official channels on Telegram and Twitter have not provided any further response.