Cryptoexchange SwissBorg Suffers $41 Million Theft, Will Reimburse Users

According to SwissBorg, a cryptoexchange platform, $41 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from an external wallet used for its SOL earn strategy in a cyberattack that also affected a partner company. The company, which is based in Switzerland, acknowledged the industry reports of the attack but has stressed that the platform was not compromised. 

CEO Cyrus Fazel said that an external finance wallet of a partner was compromised. The incident happened due to hacking of the partner’s API, a process that lets software customers communicate with each other, impacting a single counterparty. It was not a compromise of SwissBorg, the company said on X. 

SwissBorg said that the hack has impacted fewer than 1% of users. “A partner API was compromised, impacting our SOL Earn Program (~193k SOL, <1% of users).  Rest assured, the SwissBorg app remains fully secure and all other funds in Earn programs are 100% safe,” it tweeted. The company said they are looking into the incident with other blockchain security firms. 

All other assets are secure and will compensate for any losses, and user balances in the SwissBorg app are not impacted. SOL Earn redemptions have been stopped as recovery efforts are undergoing. The company has also teamed up with law enforcement agencies to recover the stolen funds. A detailed report will be released after the investigations end. 

The exploit surfaced after a surge in crypto thefts, with more than $2.17 billion already stolen this year. Kiln, the partner company, released its own statement: “SwissBorg and Kiln are investigating an incident that may have involved unauthorized access to a wallet used for staking operations. The incident resulted in Solana funds being improperly removed from the wallet used for staking operations.” 

After the attack, “SwissBorg and Kiln immediately activated an incident response plan, contained the activity, and engaged our security partners,” it said in a blogpost, and that “SwissBorg has paused Solana staking transactions on the platform to ensure no other customers are impacted.”

Fazel posted a video about the incident, informing users that the platform had suffered multiple breaches in the past.