Hackers Take $235 Million From Indian Exchange WazirX, WRX Falls 15%

Unknown bad actors have drained hundreds of millions of cryptocurrencies from India’s leading digital asset exchange Wazirx, following a security breach of the platform’s wallet.

A tweet from blockchain security firm Cyvers Alerts revealed that $234.9 million of WasirX’s funds were moved to a new address and the caller of each transaction is funded by crypto mixer Tornado Cash .

WazirX Loses $235 Million in Wallet Hack

Cyvers’ system detected several transactions related to WazirX’s Ethereum-based Safe Multisig wallet during the early European hours. The security team tried to contact the exchange 30 minutes before the tweet was published, but did not receive a response.

At the time of the announcement, the attacker’s addresses had already exchanged the stolen Pepe (PEPE), Gala (GALA) and Tether (USDT) for ether (ETH) and executed more exchange transactions. Other stolen crypto assets include Polygon (MATIC), Floki Inu (FLOKI), Shiba Inu (SHIB), 1Inch (1INCH), Uniswap (UNI) and the FTX Token.

Data shared on Telegram channel Investigations by ZachXBT show that the attacker’s wallets still contain $221 million in tokens at press time. The largest tokens in the storage include $87.5 million in SHIB, $4.6 million in MATIC, and $93.5 million in ETH.

Ongoing investigation

While the attacker continues to dump the stolen assets for ETH, WazirX has informed the community that their team is investigating the incident. The exchange has paused crypto withdrawals to contain the incident, protect assets and mitigate losses.

“We are 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 halted. Thank you for your patience and understanding. We will keep you posted with further updates,” the exchange tweeted.

The attack has negatively affected the price of WazirX’s native token, WRX. CoinMarketCap shows that the token lost roughly 15% of its value as soon as news of the attack broke. WRX dropped from $0.168 to $0.143 in a quick move, and having recovered slightly to $0.148 at the time of writing, the token is down 13% in the last 24 hours.

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