Crypto exchange WazirX suffers $230 million hack

Crypto exchange WazirX suffered a security breach in the early hours of Thursday, resulting in a $230 million loss from six stolen assets.

WazirX suffers attack, several tokens stolen

Indian crypto exchange WazirX was the victim of a cyber attack today following a breach of one of its safe multisig wallets. Attackers compromised its multisig wallet on the Ethereum network and quickly stole several tokens.

A multisig wallet requires two or more private keys for confirmation before processing a transaction.

Security firm Cyvers was the first to alert the exchange of the activity in an X post, following several suspicious transfers from the multisig wallet. The hack resulted in a loss of $234.9 million in total.

The stolen cryptocurrencies include ETH ($52.5 million), USDT ($5.79 million), PEPE ($7.6 million), GALA ($3.5 million), MATIC ($11.24 million) and SHIB ($102 million). All tokens were immediately swapped to ETH, and parts have already been sold.

Considering the large amount of SHIB dumped from the hack, the meme coin suffered nearly a 10% decline in the past 24 hours.

Crypto analysts Mudit Gupta and ZachXBT traced the series of transactions following the hack, concluding that the attack was "methodical and organized." 

According to the investigation, the attackers have been practicing the hack for the last eight days before executing their plans today. They did this by upgrading the multisig wallet, which gave them access to the funds.

"The attackers upgraded the multisig to a malicious version that allowed them to drain the multisig," wrote Mudit Gupta on X.

Following the breach, WazirX temporarily paused all withdrawals in crypto and INR for proper investigation.

"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," WazirX wrote in an X post.

Furthermore, the attack has heavily affected the price of WazirX native token WRX, which has experienced a 21% decline since the breach.