Indian Crypto Exchange WazirX loses $234 million due to security breach

One of the leading Indian crypto exchanges WazirX lost $234 million in a series of suspicious transactions today due to security breach. WazirX confirmed the security breach and announced the suspension of withdrawals on the exchange temporarily. Cyvers Alert, a Web3 security firm, announced the detection of multiple suspicious transactions involving WazirX’s Safe Multisig wallet on Ethereum. The firm identified that $234.9 million in funds from the wallet were transferred to a new address.

In an X post by the official exchange, the WazirX responded, “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.”

Multisig wallets are a type of crypto wallet that requires two or more private keys to authenticate and confirm transactions before they are processed.

Similar incidents of security breaches have taken place with CoinStats, a crypto portfolio management platform, experienced a major security breach, as reported by Finance Magnates. This sophisticated hack involved social engineering, tricking an employee into compromising the company's AWS infrastructure, resulting in the theft of $2 million in crypto assets.

Earlier, cybercriminals exploited Orbit Bridge, a service of the cross-chain protocol Orbit Chain, stealing about $82 million in cryptocurrencies. Orbit Chain confirmed the attack occurred on December 31, 2023, and is currently investigating the issue with international law enforcement.