Indian Crypto Exchange WazirX hit by over $230 million Exploit
India’s leading cryptocurrency exchange WazirX fell victim to an exploit worth over $230 million, according to on-chain security firm Cyvers.
Early today, security firm Cyvers Alert first reported the attack. "Multiple suspicious transactions" involving WazirX's Safe Multisig wallet on Ethereum were discovered by Web3 security company Cyvers.
Cyvers claims that the exploiter moved the money to another address and exchanged it for Ethereum (ETH). The security company disclosed that TornadoCash provided the $234.9 million that was moved to a new address.
📢 Update: We're aware that one of our multisig wallets has experienced a security breach. Our team is actively investigating the incident. To ensure the safety of your assets, INR and crypto withdrawals will be temporarily paused. Thank you for your patience and understanding.…
— WazirX: India Ka Bitcoin Exchange (@WazirXIndia) July 18, 2024
WazirX India said in a recent post on social media that the firm was aware of a security breach resulting in a loss of over $230 million worth of cryptocurrency. The exchange stated that it is still looking into the withdrawals and has put a pause on any withdrawals. The incident is being looked into by our team right now. Withdrawals of the Indian Rupee (INR) and cryptocurrency will be temporarily suspended to protect your assets, according to WazirX.
The attack drained the funds from the exchange's multisignature wallet on the Ethereum network, possibly as a result of a compromised private key. According to security company Blocksec, the perpetrator had to upgrade Safe Wallet's implementation to a malicious contract in order to execute the attack.
It appears that the WazirX exchange has a private key leak. A secure multi-sig wallet that contains a lot of assets is upgraded to a malicious contract using the leaked private keys. The majority of the funds in the Safe Wallet were drained by the malicious contract, according to Yajin (Andy) Zhou, a co-founder of Blocksec.
According to on-chain data, the hacker took more than $100 million in Shiba Inu (SHIB), 20 million MATIC tokens (worth $11 million), 640 billion PEPE tokens (worth $7.5 million), 5.7 million USDT, and 135 million GALA tokens ( worth $3.5 million).
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