BitMart, a cryptocurrency trading platform, revealed a “large-scale security breach” caused by a stolen private key. The breach led to the theft of more than $150 million spanning different cryptocurrencies.
The breach affected two of its most hot wallets on the Ethereum(ETH) blockchain and the Binance smart chain (BSC). the company observed that the wallets had only a ”small percentage of the assets.” Hot wallets are internet-based, unlike cold wallets that aren’t. They allow cryptocurrency owners to send and receive tokens.
The loss could total to approx $200 million, remarked Blockchain security and data analytics company PeckShield.
“This security breach was mainly caused by a stolen private key that had two of our hot wallets compromised,” BitMart’s chief executive Sheldon Xia said in a series of tweets sent out earlier today. In light of the incident, BitMart said it’s temporarily suspending withdrawals until further notice and added a thorough security review was underway, with plans to resume the operations on December 7.
The attack is the latest in a series of attacks that have targeted other cryptocurrency platforms such as PolyNetwork, Cream Finance, Liquid, and bZx, among others.
Other attacks
The article states:
“Last week, malicious actors orchestrated a heist amounting to $120 million worth of Bitcoin and Ether assets from BadgerDAO, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending service. In a separate development, blockchain startup MonoX Finance disclosed that a hacker drained roughly $31 million by exploiting a “smart contract” error in the software the service uses to carry out token swaps and enable customers to trade tokens with other networks participants.”
