By Mike Murphy
Crypto trading platform BitMart confirmed a “large-scale security breach” over the weekend, saying hackers stole about $150 million in assets.
“The affected ETH hot wallet and BSC hot wallet carry a small percentage of assets on BitMart and all of our other wallets are secure and unharmed,” BitMart said in a statement Saturday night. “We are now conducting a thorough security review and we will post updates as we progress.”
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BitMart added it was temporarily suspending withdrawals “until further notice.”
However, third-party blockchain-security and data-analytics company PeckShield Inc. — which first called attention to the breach Saturday night — estimated losses at nearly $200 million, and detailed a list of outflows that included about $100 million in losses from various crypto assets on the Ethereum blockchain and $96 million in losses from assets using the Binance Smart Chain. The stolen loot apparently included assets from nearly 50 tokens, including Binance Coin, Safemoon and Shiba Inu.
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The cyberheist is believed to be one of the largest from a centralized crypto exchange.
In August, a hacker stole more than $600 million in crypto assets from DeFi platform Poly Networks , but later returned the entire haul, claiming they had only taken the assets “for fun” and had wanted to point out a security vulnerability.
