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Hackers steal $235 million from top Indian exchange WazirX, native token drops by 15% 

Crypto hackers made away with $235 million worth of crypto assets from WazirX, India’s leading cryptocurrency exchange following a breach in the exchange’s wallet security.

The heist was detected by blockchain security firm, Cyvers Alerts which shared the findings on X after trying to alert the WazirX team.

The tweet stated the amount that have been moved and that the hackers behind the transactions were funded by Crypto Mixer Tornado cash.

“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 address has already swapped $PEPE, $GALA, and $USDT to $ETH and continues to swap other digital assets. We attempted to contact you 30 minutes ago, but received no response. 

It appears that your Safe wallet has been compromised by a malicious actor!” Cyvers Alert tweeted.

The Cyvers alerts system detected multiple transactions by supposed malicious actors involving WazirX’s Ethereum-based Safe Multisig wallet in the early hours of today.

The Cyvers alerts security team attempted to contact WazirX of the breach 30 minutes before they put out the tweet but got no response.

The malicious actors successfully drained the Safe Multisig wallet of $234.9 million worth of crypto assets and have swapped the stolen Pepe (PEPE), Gala (GALA), and Tether (USDT) to ether (ETH).

The hackers have since concluded more swaps. Other stolen crypto assets include Polygon (MATIC), Floki Inu (FLOKI), Shiba Inu (SHIB), 1Inch (1INCH), Uniswap (UNI), and the FTX Token.

Crypto analyst and Blockchain investigator ZachXBT revealed the address of the hackers and showed that the hackers still hold about $224 million worth of token at the time of the report.

The largest token in the stolen stash is $139 million worth of ETH.

WazirX launches Investigations 

The WazirX team has launched a serious investigation into the supposed breach and have informed their community on the measures they are taken.

They have also halted crypto withdrawals for the moment to secure assets, contain the incident and mitigate losses.

The WazirX team shared their plans with their twitter community asking for their patience and understanding.

“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. We’ll keep you posted with further updates.” WazirX tweeted

What to Know

  • The loss of $235 million to hackers by WazirX has negatively affected its native token WRX. The token according to CoinMarketCap has plunged by 15% since the news of the attack became mainstream.
  • WazirX is the leading crypto exchange in India with over 16 million users, trusted by individuals and institutions

Source: TheTimes.com.ng.

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