WazirX, a top Indian crypto exchange, was hacked for $235 million in a matter of minutes.
The hacker stole the funds from the exchange's Safe Multisig wallet on the Ethereum network.
The stolen funds were then converted into Ethereum and other digital assets.
The hacker still holds over $140 million in stolen crypto assets.
In response, WazirX has paused all INR and crypto withdrawals while they investigate the hack.
Recently, there has been a spate of rising hacks on centralized crypto exchanges, and another entity has just been hit.
Indian crypto exchange WazirX was hit with a massive hack, resulting in the theft and siphoning off of several cryptocurrencies worth around $235 million.
The suspicious aspect of this hack is that the exchange’s Multisig wallet on the Ethereum network was hit, leading to a wave of speculation about where the hack came from and who the hacker(s) were/are.
Here are all the details:
Cyvers Alert first tweeted about the hack's details on 18 July, at around 7:30 UTC.
The Web3 security firm noted a series of “multiple suspicious transactions”, all of which moved funds from the exchange's Safe Multisig wallet.
By the time the hack was over, a staggering $234.9M had been moved to a new address with links to Tornado Cash.
Cyvers alerts also noted that the hacker immediately began swapping cryptocurrencies like $PEPE, $GALA, and $USDT into $ETH and other digital assets.
Cyvers even notes that amid the hack, the exploiters or group of exploiters immediately began shuffling the assets.
This comes amid an attempt made by Cyvers to contact WazirX thirty minutes before the announcement.
Independent investigator ZachXBT entered the conversation, revealing that the main attacker still holds over $140 million in the stolen crypto assets despite the attempts to shuffle through Tornado Cash.
In a recent telegram post, ZachXBT revealed that the wallet still had around $100 million in Shiba Inu, $52 million in ETH, and $11 million in Polygon.
Additionally, the four wallets involved in the attack also held around $4.7 million worth of FLOKI, $3.2 million worth of Fantom, $2.8 million worth of Chainlink, and $2.3 million worth of $FET, among others.
The hacker’s address
Eventually, WazirX took to Telegram to acknowledge the hack, assuring users they were actively investigating and that all INR and crypto withdrawals had been temporarily paused.
Overall, this serves as another major incident in the long line of centralized crypto exchange hacks, after the two largest ones from May to June: the $305 million stolen from the Japanese exchange DMM Bitcoin and the 51 million EUR stolen from the Turkish exchange BTCTurk.
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