Bitmart’s CEO Sheldon Xia has revealed that the security breach that led to $196 million losses was caused by stolen administrator’s keys that opened two wallets.
Cryptocurrency security company Peckshield says that the exploit led to a loss of $100 million in various assets on the Ethereum blockchain and $96 million in BSC.
The blockchain security firm says that the hackers used the 1inch decentralized exchange to swap the looted assets for ether. The cybercriminals also used the Tornado Cash privacy mixer to deposit other funds and hide identity.
Xia says that the exchange has finalized the initial security check and has identified the list of lost digital assets that would be compensated from its funds.
A similar hack of BXH that led to the loss of $139 million in October was also reportedly due to private keys leak.
Source: Twitter
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