Indian Exchange WazirX Hacked For $230 Million, Mainly In SHIB, As Elliptic Blames North Korea

Updated: 19 July 2024

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Indian crypto exchange WazirX was hacked for over $230 million, mostly in Shiba Inu (SHIB), with on-chain sleuth Elliptic blaming North Korea.

The stolen funds accounted for 45% of the platform’s total $500 million reserve holdings. Of the cryptos that were moved during the incident, Shiba Inu (SHIB) accounted for the lion’s share with $100 million worth of the meme coin being stolen

Ethereum (ETH) worth $52 million was also stolen, as well as $11 million in MATIC and $6 million in PEPE, according to Lookonchain.

Update:#WazirX has ~$230M in assets stolen. Including:

5.43T $SHIB($102M)
15,298 $ETH($52.5M)
20.5M $MATIC($11.24M)
640.27B $PEPE($7.6M)
5.79M $USDT
135M $GALA($3.5M)
…

‼️Please note that the hacker is selling these assets!https://t.co/1uOozAVeM1 https://t.co/ogtVSFITK9 pic.twitter.com/3vPmxqXwbL

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) July 18, 2024

The SHIB price plummeted on the news and is down more than 7% in the past 24 hours to trade at $0.0000175 as of 2:45 a.m. EST.

The hackers have since been actively selling the crypto for ETH. On-chain data shows the exploiters have already exchanged the funds for 43,800 ETH worth $149.46 million. This has pushed the hackers’ ETH holdings from the incident to 59,097 ETH.

There is still $15 million worth of crypto left in the hackers’ wallet. The funds are spread between Dent, Chromia, Celer Network and Frontier tokens.

North Korean Hackers Suspected Of Being Behind The WazirX Breach

In a July 18 blog post, Elliptic said that more than 200 different assets made up the stolen funds. It added that the hackers have used a variety of decentralized services to exchange the funds for ETH.

Elliptic research added that the “hack was perpetrated by hackers affiliated with North Korea,” while ZachXBT said on X that the hack “has the potential markings of a Lazarus Group attack (yet again).”

🚨 @WazirXIndia suffered a major hack earlier this morning in a North Korea-linked breach. Elliptic analysis has identified that around $235 million in cryptoassets were lost in this breach.

Follow our latest blog for details of the hack ⬇️https://t.co/9WYfyTzfEt

— Elliptic (@elliptic) July 18, 2024

“We’re aware that one of our multisig wallets has experienced a security breach,” WazirX said in a July 18 post on X. “Our team is actively investigating the incident.”

To ensure the safety of users’ funds, the exchange temporarily paused INR and crypto withdrawals.