South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service has begun sanction procedures against Dunamu, the operator of crypto exchange Upbit, over the roughly $30 million hack the platform suffered last November, local broadcaster SBS reported Sunday.
The FSS recently sent Dunamu an inspection report covering the incident, according to the report, which cited financial authorities and industry sources. The step comes about seven months after the regulator opened its inspection of the exchange.
Upbit, South Korea's largest crypto exchange by trading volume, was hacked for 44.5 billion won (about $30 million) in Solana-based assets on Nov. 27 last year. The funds were drained to an external wallet over roughly 54 minutes starting at 4:42 a.m. local time, per SBS.
Dunamu covered the 38.6 billion won ($26 million) in affected customer assets using Upbit's own reserves. The company has frozen 2.6 billion won ($1.7 million) of the stolen funds and is working to recover them, SBS reported, up from the 2.3 billion won Upbit said it had frozen in the days after the breach.
The exchange drew criticism at the time for its disclosure timing, as it announced the hack only after a merger event with Naver Financial held the same day had concluded, according to SBS. Dunamu's stock-swap merger with the Naver fintech arm is still pending and was pushed back to Dec. 31 earlier this month, meaning the sanction process will play out while the deal awaits completion.
