CoinDCX Crypto Heist: Hackers Steal Assets Worth $44 Mn

CoinDCX was hit by a major cyberattack earlier today, which saw hackers stealing assets worth $44 Mn (nearly INR 380 Cr) from the crypto exchange’s internal operational account.

“The total amount lost was ~$44Mn out of our treasury assets. CoinDCX Treasury will be bearing these losses. Our first and foremost objective throughout the day has been to first secure assets,” said CoinDCX cofounder Neeraj Khandelwal in an X post.

Meanwhile, cofounder and CEO Sumit Gupta said that one of the platform’s “internal operational accounts”, which was used only for liquidity provisioning on a partner exchange, was compromised due to a “sophisticated” server breach. 

Gupta added that the cyber attack was quickly contained by isolating the affected operational account. He also noted that the company’s internal security and operations teams were already working with “leading cybersecurity partners” to probe the matter, patch vulnerabilities and trace the movement of funds. 

He also said that the company plans to roll out a bug bounty programme to recover the assets. 

“We are collaborating with the exchange partner to block and recover assets, including coming out with a bug bounty program soon. Every security incident is a learning and we will learn from this and further strengthen our platform, more importantly this is our time to win this war against cyberthreats in the industry and we commit to work together with experts to secure our industry,” added Gupta. 

Noting that the impacted account was segregated from customer wallets, the CEO added that the exposure to the cyberattack was limited to one account. 

Gupta also clarified that no customer funds were impacted by the cyber attack, adding that all trading activity and INR withdrawals were fully operational. However, Khandelwal said that the platform has temporarily suspended “trading in the Web3 section” as a precautionary measure. 

“CoinDCX team is all hands working to firefight the situation as we speak and we will get to the depths of the incident. All the customer assets are safe and the trading activity plus the INR withdrawals continue unhindered… ,” added Khandelwal.

CoinDCX has become the second Indian crypto exchange to be hit by a major cyber attack in the past one year. In July 2024, WazirX was hit by a major heist as hackers stole $234 Mn worth of cryptocurrencies from one of its wallets hosted on Liminal, an institutional digital asset custody platform.

Following the breach, WazirX suspended trading and withdrawals, sparking panic among users, regulatory scrutiny, and affecting nearly 4.4 Mn Indian users. The aftermath saw the company filing an FIR and even rolling out a white hat bounty programme to offer up to 10% of the stolen funds ($23 Mn).

However, even after a year, WazirX has so far recouped $3 Mn of stolen assets. Earlier this year, the governments of the US, Japan, and South Korea pinned the hack on state-backed North Korean hackers.