Hot wallets from the cryptocurrency exchange Bitmart were hacked on both Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, resulting in a total loss of about $200 million USD.
PeckShield, a blockchain security and data analytics startup, discovered the breach on Ethereum first. Binance Smart Chain was also impacted, it was discovered.
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
PeckShield reports 20 distinct cryptocurrencies stolen from Bitmart’s hot wallets, totaling $100 million USD on Ethereum and $96 million USD on Binance Smart Chain. According to PeckShield, the attacker utilized 1Inch to convert tokens into Ether and Binance Coin before transferring the assets to Tornado Cash to remain anonymous.
Bitmart CEO Sheldon Xia alerted users of the exchange about the attack through Twitter. He added that all withdrawals are temporarily halted until further investigation, but those cold storage wallets, which keep the vast bulk of the cash in custody, have not been hacked.
“The affected ETH hot wallet and BSC hot wallet carries a small percentage of assets on BitMart and all of our other wallets are secure and unharmed. We are now conducting a thorough security review and we will post updates as we progress.”
