Crypto exchange Bitmart lost nearly $200 million to a hack. The intruder breached wallets on Ethereum and Binance blockchains with a flood of transfers beginning around 2:30 PM (EST) on December 4th.
The hack was first revealed by Peckshiel that initially identified a transfer of roughly $100M over the Ethereum blockchain. On further investigation, the team found a concurrent hack of $96M on the Binance Smart Chain.
Peckshield, which is a blockchain security and data analytics company said that the hack was a straightforward case of transfer-out, swap, and wash.
Sheldon Xia, CEO Bitmart confirmed the hack via Twitter as a large-scale security breach on ETH and BSC hot wallets. The firm also said that it has frozen withdrawals until further notice and is reviewing security.
As of now, it's not clear who was responsible. The $196 million in losses makes this hack the most devastating centralized exchange hack to date.
The hacker systematically used decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1-inch to swap the stolen assets for the ether, and using a secondary address deposited the ether into privacy mixer Tornado Cash. So the hacked funds are harder to track.