Bitmart hacked for $200M following Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain exploit

Crypto exchange Bitmart lost nearly $ 200 million on an Ethereum-hosted hot wallet compromise (ETH) and the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) blockchains.

The $ 200 million Bitmart hack was first revealed by Peckshield, a blockchain security and data analytics company, which initially identified a transfer of approximately $ 100 million on the Ethereum blockchain.

Further investigation by the team revealed a simultaneous $ 96 million hack on the crypto exchange's BSC reserves:

Estimated total loss: ~ 200M (~ 100M in @ethereum and ~ 96M in @BinanceChain ). (Previously we only counted the loss in @ethereum). And here is the list of affected assets / amounts in @BinanceChain pic.twitter.com/cXXApDFtd7

- PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) December 5, 2021

Hackers took a mix of over 20 tokens including altcoins like Binance Coin (BNB), Safemoon, BSC-USD and BPay. Sizable amounts of meme coins such as BabyDoge, Floki, and Moonshot were also compromised in the hack.

According For Peckshield, the trick was a simple transfer, swap, and wash case:

Bitmart CEO Sheldon Xia later confirmed the attack on Twitter as a "large-scale security breach" on ETH and BSC's hot wallets:

“At this time we are still finalizing the possible methods used. The hackers were able to remove assets worth approximately $ 150 million. "

3/3 At this time we are temporarily suspending withdrawals until further notice. We ask for your understanding and patience in this situation. Many thanks.

- Sheldon Xia (@sheldonbitmart) December 5, 2021

Related: Cryptocurrency Lending Firm Celsius Allegedly Affected In BadgerDAO Exploit

In what appears to be an ongoing threat to the crypto ecosystem, cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius confirmed a loss of $ 50 million in the exploitation of decentralized finance (DeFi) BadgerDAO Protocol.

The first reports of the BadgerDAO security breach emerged on December 2, and the protocol officially announced that it received multiple exports of unauthorized withdrawals of user funds on Wednesday.

Taking preventive measures similar to Bitmart, Badger's team continued to investigate the issue and paused all smart contracts in the protocol to avoid further losses.