Cryptocurrency exchange BitMart has nearly 200 million USD stolen by hackers

The hack affected two hot wallets on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain and the Binance smart chain (BSC). The company behind BitMart claims that these wallets hold only a fraction of the total assets. Hot wallets, as opposed to cold wallets, are connected to the internet and allow owners to send and receive virtual currency.

However, according to estimates by blockchain security and data analysis company PeckShield, BitMart's loss is not more than 150 million USD and should be about 200 million USD. According to PeckShield, the hacker attacks directly, then transfers the virtual currency, converts it to another virtual currency and finally erases the trace.

Immediately after discovering the incident, BitMart stopped withdrawing virtual money to conduct an investigation. Currently, after fixing, all trading activities on BitMart have been restored.

Here is the list and the amount of stolen virtual currency:

BitMart is the latest victim of hackers. Before that, a series of virtual currency exchanges such as PolyNetwork, Cream Finance, Liquid and bZx were attacked.

Last week, cybercriminals also successfully stole $120 million worth of Bitcoin and Ether from BadgerDAO, a decentralized lending service (DeFi). In another development, blockchain startup MonoX Finance also revealed that hackers stole $ 31 million by exploiting a vulnerability in the software of the smart contract service.

In August, a mysterious hacker stole $600 million worth of virtual currency from PolyNetwork exchange. Two weeks later, this hacker returned almost all of the money.

Lesley Montoya

Update 07 December 2021