Hackers making away with hundreds of millions of dollars from exploits is no longer new to the market and in a way, has come to be expected by the market. This is why users have taken various steps to protect themselves as best they can in the event of these exploits.
One of the recent victims of these hacks has been BitMart. The exchange is a small to midsize exchange that sees high volumes of up to $1 billion a day. The exchange may not be investors’ first choice but it holds a significant amount of crypto traded by its users. In the latest hack, the exchange fell victim to a multi-chain exploit that saw the attackers make away with $200 million in various digital assets.
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BitMart Suffers Hack
In an attack that was uncovered by blockchain security firm PeckShield, BitMart had fallen pretty to a multi-chain attack on its platform. The attack happened across the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, where the attackers were able to move approximately $200 million in tokens.
In the reports made on Twitter, PeckShield noted that the majority of the funds stolen were in meme tokens, with only a small percentage of USDC (504,825.11) stolen. The trillions of tokens stolen on the Ethereum blockchain came out to be $100 million.
Estimate loss of @BitMartExchange: ~$100M. Here is the list of the transferred-out assets and their amounts pic.twitter.com/mUKYsuTxYZ
— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) December 5, 2021
Subsequently, PeckShield had noticed that the exploit extended to the Binance Smart Chain and carried out an analysis on the BSC reserves of BitMart which showed that the attackers had made off with an additional $96 million in BSC tokens.
Total estimated loss: ~200M (~100M on @ethereum and ~96M on @BinanceChain ). (Previously we only counted the loss on @ethereum). And here is the list of affected assets/amounts on @BinanceChain pic.twitter.com/cXXApDFtd7
— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) December 5, 2021
BitMart CEO Sheldon Xia had taken to Twitter after the news made the rounds to address the community. The CEO confirmed that the exchanged had indeed been hacked and that the hackers had carted off around $150 million. Although only its ETH and BSC hot wallets had been affected, BitMart had shut down all withdrawals until further notice.
Hackers Sell Off Tokens
The BitMart attackers had not wasted any time in offloading their loot after the hack. In a massive sell-off streak, the hackers had sold trillions worth of meme coins in the market. This had adversely affected the price of these digital assets as their value plunged following the sale.
https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1467485285944639491?s=20
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In what looks to be a clean sweep, PeckShield said that the attackers had carried out a simple swap, transfer, and wash mechanism.
Calls for investors to keep their assets off of exchanges have intensified following the BitMart hack. Users are always left in a tight spot during hacks and as such are advised to move coins off exchanges for better safekeeping.
Featured image from AZCoin News, chart from TradingView.com
