Crypto

If you trade crypto on BitMart, bad news – they were hacked, $196 million stolen

Trading has currently been halted on the platform.

by
Josiah Motley
December 6, 2021

Image: Unsplash

Deprecated: mb_convert_encoding(): Handling HTML entities via mbstring is deprecated; use htmlspecialchars, htmlentities, or mb_encode_numericentity/mb_decode_numericentity instead in /www/knowtechie_840/public/wp-content/plugins/wpcode-premium/includes/class-wpcode-snippet-execute.php(419) : eval()'d code on line 13

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

BitMart, a crypto trading platform, suffered a large security breach last week, having over $150 million stolen in Ethereum assets and other cryptocurrencies.

According to BitMart (thanks, CNBC), hackers “were able to withdraw assets of the value of approximately 150 million USD.” Data analytics firm Peckshield says that number is closer to $200 million, however.

It’s unclear if the stolen funds were from BitMart’s own wallet addresses or if users had assets stolen. In the meantime, the platform has suspended trading.

1/4 In response to this incident, BitMart has completed initial security checks and identified affected assets. This security breach was mainly caused by a stolen private key that had two of our hot wallets compromised. Other assets with BitMart are safe and unharmed.
— Sheldon Xia (@sheldonbitmart) December 6, 2021

Obviously, the hackers did their due diligence to move the crypto in a way that wouldn’t get them caught. According to Peckshield, hackers used different methods, including “Tornado Cash” to make it more difficult to trace.

Sheldon Xia, founder of BitMart, went to Twitter to say “BitMart will use our own funding to cover the incident and compensate affected users.” This makes it seem that at least a part of the stolen crypto came from users’ wallets.

BitMart also announced on Twitter today that Xia would be holding an AMA on Telegram tonight at 8PM EST. The Telegram AMA will share more information regarding the security breach.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.