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WazirX Suspends Withdrawals After Losing $230M in Crypto in Security Breach
WazirX, a major Indian cryptocurrency exchange, suspended withdrawals on Thursday after a security breach it called a “force majeure event” resulted in a loss of $230 million, nearly half of its reserves.
The Mumbai-based firm said one of its multisig wallets had suffered a security breach. A multisig wallet requires two or more private keys for authentication. WazirX said its wallet had six signatories, five of whom were on the WazirX team. Liminal, which runs a wallet infrastructure business, said in a statement to TechCrunch that its preliminary investigation had found that a wallet created outside its ecosystem had been compromised.
“The cyber attack resulted from a discrepancy between the data displayed on the Liminal interface and the actual content of the transaction,” WazirX said in a statement. declaration Thursday. “During the hack, there was a discrepancy between the information displayed on the Liminal interface and what was actually signed. We suspect that the payload was replaced to transfer control of the wallet to an attacker.”
Lookchain, a third-party blockchain explorer, reported that more than 200 cryptocurrencies, including 5.43 billion SHIB tokens, over 15,200 Ethereum tokens, 20.5 million Matic tokens, 640 billion Pepe tokens, 5.79 million USDT, and 135 million Gala tokens have been “stolen” from the platform.
Blockchain data suggests that attackers are trying to Download resources using Uniswap decentralized exchange. Elliptic risk management platform reported that the hackers have ties to North Korea.
About $230 million in missing assets is significant for WazirX, which reported holdings of about $500 million in its June reserve trial. disclosure.
CoinSwitch and CoinDCX, two other major cryptocurrency exchanges in India, assured their customers that their funds were safe and not affected by this incident.
“The security of our wallet remains solid,” Sumit Gupta, co-founder and CEO of CoinDCX, wrote in a tweet.
“We advise all our cryptocurrency investors to be aware of the potential market volatility during this period and to exercise caution in their trading and investment activities,” tweeted Ashish Singhal, co-founder and CEO of PeepalCo, the holding company of the CoinSwitch group.
This is the latest setback for WazirX, which split from Binance in early 2023 after the two cryptocurrency exchanges had high-profile and public fallout in 2022. Two years after Binance announced it had acquired WazirX, the two companies began a dispute over the ownership of the Indian company. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao eventually claimed that the two companies had been unable to close the deal and has moved to end Binance’s business with the Indian company.
“This is a force majeure event beyond our control, but we are leaving no stone unturned to locate and recover the funds. We have already blocked some deposits and contacted the affected wallets for recovery. We are in contact with the best resources to assist us in this endeavor,” WazirX said in a statement posted on his X account.
The story was updated throughout the day, most recently at 11:03 p.m. (Indian Standard Time) to include WazirX’s confirmation that it had lost cryptocurrency in the security breach.