$234M in Crypto Hacked From WazirX, Converted to Ethereum

WazirX, one of India’s biggest Crypto Exchanges, was hacked yesterday, presenting a significant security concern. The breach led to losing $234 million of the users’ funds. The hacker went for the exchange’s multisig wallet on the Ethereum network, where he or she made away with more than 200 cryptocurrencies.

WazirX Hacker Holds $15M in Altcoins

The hacker cashed out most of the assets to ether (ETH). Block analysis company Lookonchain found the stolen funds were traded for 43,800 ETH, equivalent to $149.45 million. When writing this article, the hacker’s wallet contains approximately 59,097 Ethers, a cryptocurrency equivalent to about $201.5 million.

The #WazirX exploiter has exchanged most of the assets for 43,800 $ETH($149.46M) and currently holds 59,097 $ETH($201.67M).

Currently, there are ~$15M assets left. Including:
1.66B $DENT ($1.56M)
6.76M $CHR ($1.72M)
78.6M $CELR ($1.12M)
958,428 $FRONT ($909K)
…

It is worth… pic.twitter.com/MX9uvt3BpV

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) July 19, 2024

In addition to the ether, the hacker has approximately $15 million worth of Dent, Chromia, Celer Network, and Frontier tokens in his or her wallet. A transaction included depositing $7.7 million in Dent tokens to a non-used Binance deposit address.

Cyber Attack Halts WazirX Withdrawals

WazirX has suspended all the withdrawals as it tries to establish the source of the security breach. The exchange pointed out that the cyber attack arose from a mismatch between the information displayed on Liminal and the transaction’s details. Liminal assured its clients that all their platforms, infrastructure, wallets, and assets are secure.

Based on our initial findings, one of the self-custody multi-sig smart contract wallets developed outside the Liminal ecosystem has been hacked, said WazirX. The exchange is trying to fix the problem and ensure that its platform is safe. The manner through which the hack was done has yet to be ascertained.

Blockchain analytics company Elliptic said that the hackers could be from North Korea. The firm’s report provided on-chain information about the tactics allegedly used by North Korean actors, who have been known to attack cryptocurrency exchanges to support their regime.

This incident follows other significant cyber-attacks in the cryptocurrency market. There are concerns about the security of digital asset exchanges. WazirX is already upgrading its security features to ensure that similar attacks are not witnessed in the near future.

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