A new exchange has fallen victim to a hack after hackers managed to exploit a vulnerability. Hackers gained access to hot exchange wallets, which are hosted via Ethereum (ETH) The network and the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and launched a massive portfolio of mixed coins.
The exchange that fell victim is Bitmart, ranked 121st by CoinMarketCaps Arrange cryptocurrency exchange. Initially, $100 million in assets were stolen via the Ethereum blockchain, although further investigations revealed a simultaneous hack that also involved the theft of $96 million in coins originating from the BSC ecosystem.
The whistleblower was a third party
Incidentally, it was not the exchange itself that announced the hack, but a blockchain data analysis and security firm called Peckshield. They were the first to identify transactions around $100 million on the Ethereum network.
loss estimate Tweet embed: ~ 100 million dollars. Below is a list of the transferred assets and their amounts pic.twitter.com/mUKYsuTxYZ
– PeckShield Inc. (pickshield) December 5, 2021
More than 25 different coins have been stolen from the Ethereum wallet. The most stolen coin appears to be Shiba Inu (SHIB) with a total value of over $29 million. It seems to be mainly about memecoins, although it also appears that there are some more serious projects like Fantom (FTM) and Polygon (MATIC).
Rated total loss: ~200M (~100M on Tweet embed and ~96 million Tweet embed ). (Previously, we only counted the loss Tweet embed). Here is the list of assets/amounts affected on Tweet embed pic.twitter.com/cXXApDFtd7
– PeckShield Inc. (pickshield) December 5, 2021
On the BSC network, SafeMoon (Safemoon) appears to be the biggest victim. Among the 20 exploited projects, this project owns the largest share of about $40 million in stolen coins.
Bitmart is finally giving up
After Peckshield revealed the hack, there was a great deal of confusion among investors on the platform. Bitmart itself did not initially confirm the hack, on the contrary, the officials in their Telegram group were able to say that no hack occurred at all.
interesting from Tweet embed … 😳😳😳 🙏🙏🙏 https://t.co/dFrzSww0fs pic.twitter.com/GuDB7bt2eC
– PeckShield Inc. (pickshield) December 5, 2021
according to some The hack was fake news while others claimed that withdrawals were normal for the platform and that the coins were safe. In the end, it was Bitmart CEO Sheldon Shea who confirmed that the hack had indeed occurred.
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