Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX confirmed it had suffered a security breach on Thursday after approximately $230 million in assets were stolen from the platform in “suspicious transfers” early that morning.
The Mumbai-based company announced that it was temporarily suspending withdrawals from its platform following a security breach of one of its multi-sig wallets, which require two or more private keys for authentication.
Lookchain, a third-party blockchain explorer, reported that 5.43 billion SHIB tokens, over 15,200 Ethereum tokens, 20.5 million Matic tokens, 640 billion Pepe tokens, 5.79 million USDT, and 135 million Gala tokens were “stolen” from the platform.
The identity of the attackers is unknown, but blockchain data suggests they are attempting to sell the assets using decentralized exchange Uniswap.
The loss of roughly $230 million in assets is a major problem for WazirX, which reported holdings of roughly $500 million in a June disclosure.
Two other major cryptocurrency exchanges in India, CoinSwitch Kuber and CoinDCX, assured customers that their funds were safe and unaffected by the incident.
“The security of our wallets remains strong,” CoinDCX co-founder and CEO Sumit Gupta tweeted.
“We advise all crypto investors to be mindful of possible market volatility during this time and exercise caution in any trading or investment activity,” Ashish Singhal, co-founder and CEO of Peepal, CoinSwitch's group holding company, tweeted.