DBT Bureau
Bengaluru, 3 September 2024
The hackers behind India’s worst cyberattack on crypto exchange have started laundering some of the $234 million stolen in the incident from the WazirX exchange, a Bloomberg report said.
Ironically, such laundering act started on the same day, WazirX briefed on its efforts to recover funds.
According to the report, the perpetrator on Monday moved 2,500 Ether tokens worth about $6.3 million to Tornado Cash, in which the origin of crypto assets can’t be determined.
The report said citing blockchain intelligence firm Arkham Intelligence, which highlighted the flows.
Over 4 million users have been impacted by a hack that threatens to erode confidence in domestic Indian crypto exchanges, which are dealing with crypto assets that are not regulated in the country.
What happened so far?
- WazirX Crypto Exchange suffered multi-million dollar security breach on July 18, 2024. A cyberattack was mounted that led to compromise of a multi-signature Ethereum (ETH) and ERC-20 token wallet belonging to WazirX. The attackers siphoned off around $230 million worth of digital assets, representing nearly half of WazirX’s total holdings according to their most recent proof-of-reserve report (around $503 million).
- The attack is suspected to be mounted by the Lazarus Group, a North Korean state-sponsored hacking group, given its previous track record.
- Experts believe that the perpetrators gained unauthorized access to multiple keys required for authorizing transactions within the targeted multi-signature wallet.
- Investors are expected to recover only 55% to 57% of their funds with complete recovery seeming impossible
- The hacker group has started laundering the amount hacked from WazirX.
