Indian Crypto Exchange WazirX Loses Over $230M in Cyber Heist

WazirX, a popular Indian crypto exchange, lost about $230 million worth of users’ crypto assets in a recent security breach, according to an official statement on the platform’s X account. 

The tweet read, “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. We’ll keep you posted with further updates.”

WazirX’s Historic Crypto Hack

The platform’s hack has sent shockwaves through the cryptocurrency market with the perpetrators carrying out one of the largest crypto exchange thefts ever recorded, resulting in estimated losses exceeding $230 million at the time of the report.

Cyvers Alert, a Web 3 security firm, was one of the initial detectors of the attack. According to the platform’s report, they detected several suspicious transactions on the Wazirx Safe Multisig wallet on the Ethereum network.

🚨ALERT🚨Hey @WazirXIndia, Our system has detected multiple suspicious transactions involving your Safe Multisig wallet on the #ETH network.

A total of $234.9M of your funds have been moved to a new address. Each transaction’s caller is funded by @TornadoCash.

The suspicious… pic.twitter.com/4sajAwd4Hb

— 🚨 Cyvers Alerts 🚨 (@CyversAlerts) July 18, 2024

The hacker moved approximately $234.9 million to another wallet address, funding each transaction by privacy protocol, Tornado Cash. Further investigations showed that the hacker is already swapping the stolen (PEPE), Gala (GALA), and Tether (USDT) assets into Ethereum (ETH).

Crypto detective ZachXBT, in a Telegram post in the “Investigations by ZachXBT” channel revealed that the hacker’s wallet still has some unliquidated funds left. The remaining stolen funds included $100 million in Shiba Inu (SHIB) and $4.7 million in Floki Inu (FLOKI) at the time of report.

WazirX Halts Withdrawal Services

After the Indian crypto exchange acknowledged the security breach, they took measures to prevent further damages by disabling the withdrawal of the Indian rupees (INR) or any other cryptocurrencies on the platform. WazirX also confirmed that it is working to address the situation.

The frequency and severity of cryptocurrency exchange hacks have reached an alarming level, with a growing number of platforms losing funds to cyber attacks. 

In a recent report, threat actors hacked Lykke UK and Lykke Corp AG (Lykke) and made away with over $22 million worth of crypto assets.