MUMBAI: WazirX, one of the leading crypto currency exchanges in India with about 1.6 crore users, faced a hacker attack on Thursday that, according to one estimate, resulted in unauthorised withdrawal of various tokens aggregating about $235 million (around Rs 1,966 crore) from its customers’ wallets. As a result,

WazirX

has stopped all withdrawals in rupee and crypto currencies temporarily, it said through a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Elliptic, a global crypto currency analytics and compliance firm, said that North Korean

hackers

were behind the attack on WazirX.
On Thursday afternoon, WazirX said that it was aware that one of its wallets had experienced a

security breach

. “Our team is actively investigating the incident. To ensure the safety of your assets, rupee and crypto withdrawals will be temporarily paused,” the platform noted.
According to Elliptic’s analysis posted on its site, WazirX lost about $235 million worth of crypto assets in the North Korea-linked breach, made up of more than 200 different assets. Of the total, nearly $97 million was in Shibu Inu crypto coins, $52.6 million in Ether, and $11 million in Matic.

“The thief has already swapped a number of these tokens for Ether using a variety of decentralised services, as expected initial step of a typical laundering process,” Elliptic’s analysis noted. “On-chain analysis and other information reviewed by Elliptic indicate that this hack was perpetrated by hackers affiliated with

North Korea

.”

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