After receiving an email threatening a hacker attack, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange GOPAX suspended trading, recharges, and regular withdrawals. Customers can still apply for manual withdrawals through the customer service center.

According to a local newspaper, "Jingxiang News," GOPAX suspended trading, recharging, and regular withdrawals on Friday after receiving this email. A representative from GOPAX told the newspaper that as of that time, there were no attempts at hacking or theft.

According to GOPAX, recharges and regular withdrawals were suspended at UTC at 5:55; subsequently, trading was halted at UTC at 6:53. This is the content of the second announcement. All unexecuted orders have been cancelled.

GOPAX indicates that there is a plan to transfer all encrypted assets to offline wallets in order to protect users after a series of data breaches and hacking incidents that affected financial institutions. The notification cites recommendations from financial regulatory authorities.

Cointelegraph has contacted GOPAX for a comment on this matter, but as of the time of publication, no response has been received.

Customers can still apply for withdrawals through the support center of GOPAX, but the exchange warns that manual verification and approval may prolong the processing time.

This suspension occurred a few days after the Financial Services Commission of South Korea ( FSC ) urged domestic exchanges to increase the proportion of cold wallet holdings. Previously, Binance suffered a hacker attack worth $6.3 billion. South Korean exchanges are required to store at least 80% of their customers' crypto assets in cold storage.

Previous data from the Financial Services Commission of Korea showed that as of the end of September, GOPAX had 80.54% of user assets in offline status, which is close to the prescribed minimum requirement.

In October, FSC reported that among the 555 financial companies reviewed nationwide, 130 had cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Regulatory authorities also included GOPAX operator Streami as well as the cryptocurrency exchange Prabang in the list of 16 companies previously involved in security incidents, and consequently plan to strengthen cybersecurity supervision.

The South Korean exchange Prabang also suspended services on October 24 after detecting abnormal withdrawals from hot wallets. According to reports by the Korea News Agency, the exchange suffered a loss of about 100 million Korean won (approximately 70,000 US dollars). Prabang stated that they will use company funds to compensate affected customers.

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