Bitmart, a crypto exchange, lost over $200 million to unauthorized access to its hot wallet that was hosted on BSC and Ethereum.
A notable blockchain data analytics organization, Peckshield announced the hack when it pinpointed a transfer of over one hundred million dollars to the Ethereum network. Later on, Peckshield added that an extra $96 million had been siphoned by hackers on the BSC reserves of the exchange. According to the analytics firm:
“Estimated total loss: ~ 200M (~ 100M on @ethereum and ~ 96M on @BinanceChain ). (Previously we only counted the loss on @ethereum). And here is the list of assets/amounts concerned on @BinanceChain.”
In the hack, coins like Safemoon, BPay, and BNB were stolen. A sizeable amount of meme tokens such as Floki and BabyDoge were also siphoned. Peckshield described the hack as a simple case of transfer, swap, and wash.
The CEO of Bitmart, Sheldon Xia confirmed Peckshield’s statement on Twitter:
“At the moment, we are still in the process of concluding on the possible methods used. The hackers were able to remove assets worth around $ 150 million. At this time, we are temporarily suspending withdrawals until further notice. We ask for your understanding and patience in this situation. Thank you so much.”
He went on to say that,
‘4/4 In terms of asset deposit and withdrawals, we are confident that deposit and withdrawal functions will gradually begin on December 7, 2021. The detailed timelines will be announced very soon. Thank you.’
Xia explained what resulted in the hack:
“1/4 In response to this incident, BitMart has completed initial security checks and identified affected assets. This security breach was mainly caused by a stolen private key that had two of our hot wallets compromised. Other assets with BitMart are safe and unharmed.”
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