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Crypto trading platform BitMart confirms a $150 million hack

Crypto trading platform BitMart confirms a $150 million hack

A security firm has confirmed a “large scale security breach” from crypto trading platform BitMart, with losses initially believed to be around $150 but later estimated at closer to $200 million. 

The platform’s official statement titled ‘​’BitMart Security Breach Update’ informed users that they had identified a large-scale security breach relating to one of their ETH hot wallets, as well as one of their BSC hot wallets. The approximation they provided was the theft of approximately $150 million USD.

“The affected ETH hot wallet and BSC hot wallet carry 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. At this moment we are temporarily suspending withdrawals until further notice. We beg for your kind understanding and patience in this situation.”

The founder and CEO of BitMart Sheldon Xiatweeted following the hack,  confirming the incident that took place on December 4th:

“We have identified a massive security breach involving one of the hot ETH wallets and one of the hot BSC wallets. We are currently trying to identify possible hacking methods. Hackers managed to withdraw assets worth about $ 150 million “

While BitMart initially confirmed the loss of around $150 million, information security specialist firm Peckshield estimated a loss of closer to $200 million. Pechshield was one of the first to notice and point out the abnormal number of withdrawals from the BitMart platform, noting via Twitter that, including the loss on Ethereum and Binance Chain, the total estimated loss was around $196 million.

BitMart is the latest crypto trading platform to fall prey to cybercrime, last week a front end exploit enabled hackers to drain around $10 million from the Badger DAO yield vault protocol, and DeFi platform MonoX also reported the loss of $31 million following a DeFi hack that saw hackers steal  $18.2 million in wrapped ether (WETH) and $10.5 million in polygon (MATIC).

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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