A new exchange has fallen victim to a hack after hackers managed to take advantage of an exploit. The hackers gained access to the exchange’s hot wallets, which are hosted via the Ethereum (ETH) network and the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and took off with a hefty bag of mixed coins.
The exchange that has fallen victim is Bitmart, which is ranked 121 of CoinMarketCaps ranking of crypto exchanges. Initially, $100 million in assets were stolen via the Ethereum blockchain, though further investigation revealed a simultaneous hack that also involved theft of $96 million in coins originating from the BSC ecosystem.
Whistleblower was an external party
Incidentally, it was not the exchange itself that announced the hack, but a blockchain security and data analysis company called Peckshield. They were the first to identify the transactions of approximately $100 million on the Ethereum network.
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
More than 25 different coins have been stolen from the Ethereum wallet. The most stolen coin appears to be Shiba Inu (SHIB) with a total value of over $29 million. It seems to be mainly about memecoins, although there also seem to be some more serious projects such as Fantom (FTM) and Polygon (MATIC).
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
On the BSC network, SafeMoon (Safemoon) seems to be the biggest victim. Of the 20 exploited projects, this project has the largest share with almost $40 million in stolen coins.
Bitmart finally gives in
After Peckshield disclosed the hack, there was quite a bit of confusion among investors on the platform. Bitmart itself had initially not yet confirmed the hack, on the contrary, admins in their Telegram group were able to say that no hack had taken place at all.
Interesting from @BitMartExchange …???????????? ???????????? https://t.co/dFrzSww0fs pic.twitter.com/GuDB7bt2eC
— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) December 5, 2021
According to some the hack was fake news while others claimed that withdrawals are normal for a platform and that the coins were just safe. In the end, it was Bitmart CEO Sheldon Xia who confirmed that the hack actually took place.
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