CoinDCX's Recovery Bounty After $44 Mn Crypto Heist

CoinDCX Rolls Out Bounty Programme For The $44 Mn Crypto Heist

SUMMARY

CoinDCX on its website blog announced the recovery bounty programme with a potential pool of $11 Mn (about INR 100 Cr)

The startup is calling upon ethical hackers, white-hat researchers and other cybersecurity experts to participate in the bounty programme

The Bengaluru-based startup has now become the second crypto exchange to suffer from a major cyber lapse after WazirX

CoinDCX has launched a recovery bounty programme following a major cyberattack that led to a theft of assets worth $44 Mn from the crypto exchange’s internal operational account.

The company on its website blog announced the recovery bounty programme with a potential pool of $11 Mn (about INR 100 Cr).

“Up to 25% of any recovered funds will be awarded to individuals or teams who can help trace and retrieve the stolen crypto, but more importantly assist in the identification and conviction of those involved,” the blog read.

“More than recovering the stolen funds, what is important for us is to identify and catch the attackers, because such things shouldn’t happen again, not with us, not with anyone in the industry,” Sumit Gupta, cofounder, CoinDCX posted on X.

The startup is calling upon ethical hackers, white-hat researchers and other cybersecurity experts to participate in the bounty programme.

CoinDCX claims that it has absorbed the impact of the stolen assets from its company treasury and no customers have been impacted and the platform continues to function properly.

To recover the lost assets, the startup is working with several cybersecurity firms like Sygnia, zeroShadow, and Seal911, as well as ecosystem collaborators such as the Solana Foundation, Superteam, and bridge providers Wormhole and deBridge.

The assets were stolen two days back as one of the internal wallets of CoinDCX was compromised which was meant only for liquidity provisioning on a partner exchange. However the startup claims that the attack was quickly contained by isolating the operational account.

CoinDCX has now become the second crypto exchange to suffer from a major cyber lapse. In July 2024, WazirX was also hit by a major crypto heist where digital assets worth $234 Mn were stolen from one of its wallets hosted on Liminal, an institutional digital asset custody platform.

Close to 4 Mn users were impacted from the WazirX’s heist while the crypto exchange suspended trading and withdrawals, sparking panic among users. The company filed an FIR and also rolled out a recovery bounty programme offering 10% of the total stolen amount as a reward.

Till date WazirX has only been able to recover $3 Mn of the total lost assets and authorities of US, Japan, and South Korea pinned the hack on state-backed North Korean hackers.