On-chain researchers have suggested that an India-based cryptocurrency exchange is trying to hide the $7.5 million hacking attack.
$7.5M hack shown as ‘system maintenance’
On-chain detective ZachXBT reported that India-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitbns suffered a $7.5 million hack last month. Allegedly, Bitbns tried to hide the hacking event through “system maintenance” on this date.
Gaurav Dahake, CEO of Bitbns, said they contacted ZachXBT, the owner of the claim, and clarified the matter at an AMA session…
Let’s call out the crypto exchange @bitbns for hiding a $7.5m hack from their users on February 1 2022 and then proceeding to tell them it was “system maintenance”
0x24f361E1eeEdF29fd6D724C9393132D61c51ebB1 pic.twitter.com/a3aBqlgW0z
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) February 28, 2023
BNS Token (BNS) price drops in double digits amid allegations
BNS Token, launched by India-based crypto exchange Bitbns, is an exchange token used for digital payments in ERC20 standards. It’s been falling since February 28, when ZachXBT’s claims came to light, and have lost an additional 11% today. BNS price dropped from its intraday high of $0.0004817 to $0.0004258. At the time of writing, it is drifting to new local lows amid heavy selling pressure.
Used Tornado Cash for stolen cryptocurrencies
When Bitbns was shut down for “system maintenance”, their hot wallets experienced large simultaneous withdrawals. A large amount of money between “0x4960” and “0x24f3” was withdrawn from the wallet. A customer support tweet from a Twitter user to the exchange proves that 0x4960 is a Bitbns hot wallet.
Obviously, 0x24f3 sent money to wallet 0x4895 and used Tornado Cash to withdraw the money. Funds were withdrawn in batches of 100 Ethereum (ETH) from 0x4895 last year. The most recent transaction took place for 3 ETH on February 28, 2023.
In the details of the transactions, several million 11 different tokens were transferred from BitBNS during the hack on February 1 and sent to an anonymous wallet. 2,433 ETH was sent to Tornado Cash, which hides the trace of crypto transactions by mixing the deposited crypto with crypto from other transactions. Tornado Cash users can then withdraw funds from a different address. Here are the transaction records of stolen funds prepared by ZachXBT:
Bitbns CEO reassures about stolen cryptocurrencies
Bitbns CEO Gaurav Dahake confirmed at the AMA that their wallet had been compromised. However, he noted that it coincided with system maintenance and upgrading to V3. He added that the company wants to share hack reports once the investigation is complete.
The CEO of the Indian exchange also announced that users can withdraw money even after the event. But on the contrary, some users shared screenshots of Bitbn’s INR withdrawal window. It mentions that withdrawals will be processed within “more than 30-60 banking days”.
Kudos to @bitbns for being transparent! pic.twitter.com/aNzEabDBoE
— Crypto Hanuman (@crypto_hanuman) January 29, 2023
As Kriptokoin.com, we reported that MyAlgo, a crypto wallet on the Algorand network, was hacked today.
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