WazirX hit by a ₹1.900cr breach

Attack pattern points to state-backed hacker group from North Korea

- Gautam S Mengle

One of India's biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, WazirX, confirmed on Thursday that they had been hit by a cybersecurity breach. Cybersecurity researchers who first spotted the breach told the FPJ in an exclusive interaction that the pattern of the attack was similar to those by the Lazarus Group, an infamous North Korean state-sponsored hacker group. According to independent researchers as well as data accessed by the FPJ, around $230 million, which is more than Rs 1,923 crore, has been lost in the incident.

"We're aware that one of our multisig wallets has experienced a security breach. Our team is actively investigating the incident. To ensure the safety of your assets, INR and crypto withdrawals will be temporarily paused. Thank you for your patience and understanding. We'll keep you posted with further updates," said the official update from the company.

A multisig wallet is a crypto storage system that requires multiple approvals before the operator can access the funds in the wallet. While this is a very strong security measure, in this case, it also means that the hackers behind the breach were capable enough to crack it.