Hack, detention, secrets… Multichain explains and closes

The protocol Multichain a lost the control of its assets and services. The team brings everything to a standstill and confirms that its CEO Zhaojun has been detained by the Chinese police since May.

Nothing is going right at Multichain. User assets have been stolen and transferred to addresses beyond the control of the protocol team. In a very long message published on Twitter, the team explains the events of recent months.

The story begins in May. The cross-chain service Multichain is experiencing difficulties, the causes of which are unknown. The developers simply mention a case of force majeure, with no further details.

Access to MPC servers lost in May

They explain themselves today. On May 21, their CEO Zhaojun was arrested by the Chinese police and placed in detention. He has remained in prison ever since. The authorities also searched his home and seized his computers, phones and hardware wallets.

This arrest was followed by revocation of operational access keys to MPC node servers. Control is in the hands of Zhaojun, who is unavailable. Since then, the company has tried to maintain operations in degraded mode.

Due to the lack of information on the case, the team has only been able to maintain project operations to the best of its ability thanks to remaining access on certain non-MPC servers that had not yet been revoked,” Multichain details.

First hack on July 7

At the request of Zhaojun’s family and in accordance with Chinese law, the company declares that it has chosen to maintain the confidentiality of this information. On June 4, through the CEO’s family, Mulichain engineers will benefit from a restricted access allowing them to resolve a technical incident.

The Multichain protocol continued to function as expected. The team has made every effort, with limited resources, to keep the Multichain protocol running and to resolve user issues wherever possible,” the protocol reports.

On July 7, however, user assets were transferred from MPC addresses to unknown accounts. An examination of Zhaojun’s sister would reveal access from an IP address in Kunming, a Chinese city.

Two players later, the executive’s sister transfers the remaining assets, explaining her act by the desire to preserve them. “The funds were transferred to EOA addresses controlled by Zhaojun’s sister”.

A story of family and police in China

The story doesn’t end there. On July 13, again according to information from the family, their only source, it was the turn of the CEO’s sister to be arrested by the Chinese authorities.

Today, Zhaojun’s sister is also unreachable. The state of the property she has preserved is uncertain. The team therefore feels it is necessary to inform the community of all known circumstances.”

Multichain has no other source of information and is therefore unresponsive. Its team asks users to stop using the crypto service. The team does not have access to the domain account to redirect or shut down the site.

And beware of scams a message published on July 14 under the original post, claims to grant a refund to users.

“Temporary compensation has been allocated due to negative market sentiment,” announces the fake twitter account. This is a scam. In the current context, caution is advised before connecting your wallet to any service claiming to be Multichain.

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