WazirX Loses IDR 3.75 Trillion Due To Massive Hacking

JAKARTA - A shocking event came from the crypto world. WazirX, one of India's largest crypto exchanges, experienced a massive hack that resulted in a fantastic loss of $234 million. This incident created a major furore among the crypto community and raised widespread concerns about the security of digital assets.

This shocking news was confirmed directly by WazirX through an official announcement. They stated that there was a security breach in one of their multisig wallets, which forced the exchange to temporarily suspend all withdrawals of funds both in INR and cryptocurrencies.

In the announcement, WazirX said, "We are aware that one of our multisig wallets has experienced a security breach. Our team is investigating this incident. To ensure the safety of your assets, the withdrawal of INR and crypto will be temporarily suspended. Thank you for the patience and understanding."

Blockchain security platform, Cyvers Alerts, reports that their system detected a series of suspicious transactions involving WazirX's Safe Multisig wallet on the Ethereum network. A total of $234.9 million has been transferred to a new address whose entire transaction is funded by Tornado Cash, a crypto mixing service known to hide the origin of the transaction.

Suspicious wallet 0x04b2 has even thrown away a PEPE token worth US$7.6 million (Rp121.6 billion) and exchanged GALA and USDT into ETH.

List Of Stolen Assets

According to data from Lookonchain, Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens are the most withdrawn with a value of more than 100 million US dollars (Rp1.6 trillion). This was followed by 52 million US dollars (Rp832 billion) in Ether (ETH), 11 million US dollars (Rp176 billion) in Matic (MATIC), and 6 million US dollars (Rp96 billion) in Pepe (PEPE). Hackers have started selling these assets in the market.

Bradley Park, a Web3 analyst at CryptoQuant, said, "This is SHIB reserves in WazirX. You can see that 5.4 trillion has been withdrawn from the exchange. These assets will most likely be sold to Ethereum at any time."

Based on a recent Proof of Reserve report from WazirX, the total ownership of the exchange is worth less than US$502 million (Rp8.03 trillion). This hack is a major blow to India's crypto community already under intense scrutiny from regulators.

Crypto exchanges in India are facing heavy pressure due to low trading volume since the implementation of TDS taxes of 1% in each transaction. Many retail customers prefer foreign exchanges to avoid the tax.

Previously, the Indian Financial Intelligence Unit (FUI) blocked the URLs of several foreign crypto exchanges including Binance for not complying with local AML policies.

This massive hack is not only a disaster for WazirX, but also a stern warning to all crypto users. The security of digital assets should be the main thread. Users are advised to always keep sensitive information such as seed prishes well and continue to monitor the security of their wallets. With this incident, the crypto community in India is expected to be more vigilant and proactive in protecting their assets from increasingly sophisticated hacking threats.