Grinex, a Russia-linked cryptocurrency exchange that has been linked to the laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars in criminal proceeds, suspended its operations on Thursday after saying it had been struck by a large-scale cyber-attack.
It said more than 1 billion rubles (£9.7m) of user funds were stolen in the attack, which it attributed to the intelligence services of “unfriendly states” .
The company disclosed a list of accounts it claimed were accessed by attackers, with outgoing transactions of approximately $15m (£11m) in the USDT stablecoin on 15 April.
It said the funds were then sent to further accounts on the TRON or Ethereum blockchains.
The company said the attack was designed to “cause direct damage to Russia’s domestic financial sovereignty”.
Located in Kyrgyzstan, but with ties to Russia, Grinex is one of the largest exchanges for converting rubles to crypto-assets, and has engaged in crypto-asset transactions worth more than $6bn (£4.4bn).
The platform is also considered the direct successor to Garantex, a Russian exchange that was sanctioned by the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and targeted by international law enforcement for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars of revenues from ransomware , darknet markets and state- hacking groups.
Following Garantex’s shutdown, the company’s remaining liquidity, customers and staff migrated to Grinex, according to investigators.
Grinex is also the primary platform for trading the ruble-backed stablecoin A7A5, created as part of Russia’s efforts to evade Western sanctions , which has been used to transfer more than $100bn.
Matt Broersma is a long standing tech freelance, who has worked for Ziff-Davis, ZDnet and other leading publications
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