Top Indian Crypto Exchange CoinDCX Confirms $44 Million Theft in Cyberattack

In the dark underbelly of the digital landscape, cybersecurity remains the elusive guardian of financial fortresses. A stark reminder of this was served when CoinDCX, India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, reported a detrimental security breach leading to a staggering $44 million loss to cunning cyber thieves. The eye-popping heist happened when an internal operational account used for liquidity provisioning on a partner exchange was manipulated. The unsettling incident left the crypto world oscillating, although CoinDCX’s customer funds remained untouched.

Earlier, crypto security researcher ZachXBT broke the news of the hack, stating that $44.2 million had been siphoned off from CoinDCX’s reserves. The hackers funded their account with Ethereum before a large chunk of the stolen bounty was routed from Solana to Ethereum, confirming the crypto exchange. The stolen funds, currently dormant, were consolidated into 4,443 Ethereum and 155,830 Solana.

Despite the disturbing incident, the crypto industry’s resilience is remarkable. Defying the setback, CoinDCX quickly isolated the compromised operational account, ensuring other accounts remained untouched. The crypto giant also launched a ‘recovery bounty’ to trace the digital trail of the stolen treasure, offering up to 25% of recovered funds as a reward.

This incident follows closely on the heels of a similar breach experienced by Indian crypto exchange, WazirX, a year ago which led to the loss of nearly half its reserves, $230 million. However, any connection between these two unfortunate cyber heists remains unestablished.