Crypto currency exchange Bybit announced on February 21st that ETH was stolen from one of the Ethereum cold wallets worth $ 1.46 billion.
“The incident occurred during ETH Multisig Cold Wallet during a transfer to our hot wallet. Unfortunately, this process was manipulated by a complex attack that masks the signing interface and displays the right address while displaying the right address. ”
“As a result, the attacker was able to take control of the affected ETH cold wallet and transfer the contents to an unidentified address.”
Bybit detected unauthorized activity involving one of our ETH cold wallets. The incident occurred when our ETH multisig cold wallet executed a transfer to our warm wallet. Unfortunately, this transaction was manipulated through a sophisticated attack that masked the signing…
— Bybit (@Bybit_Official) February 21, 2025
Bybit says that all other cold wallets and customer funds are completely safe and that the stock market transactions are not interrupted due to the incident.
What happened in the Bybit attack?
The attack took place while the Dubai -based crypto currency platform made a “hot” wallet from the “cold” wallet from offline. A computer pirate was able to abuse security controls and transfer assets to an unknown address. The price of Ethereum fell approximately 4 percent after the attack news, but then returned to almost old levels.
How much money was stolen in the attack?
The company estimates that Ethereum was stolen about $ 1.6 billion. According to Blockchain Analytical firm Elliptic, it is said to be the biggest theft in the industry.
The biggest attack in crypto history
In a single attack, a crypto currency worth $ 1.46 billion was stolen, and this was the biggest crypto currency attack so far. He almost doubled the previous record. In March 2022, Sky Mavis announced that attackers stole $ 620 million crypto currency (173,600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USD token) from the Ronin network bridge of Axie Infinity. In April 2022, the FBI associated this event with Lazarus and Bluenoroff (also known as APT38), two North Korean computer pirate groups.
A year ago, in August 2021, the inter -chain protocol was stolen on Binance Chain, Ethereum and Polygon networks worth $ 611 million from Poly Network.
The United States, South Korea and Japan reported that North Korean state -backed computer pirates stole crypto currency worth $ 659 million last year.
However, a month ago, Blockchain analysis, Chainalysis, said North Korean computer pirates stole crypto currency worth $ 1.34 billion in 47 cyber attacks during 2024 and broke their records of $ 1.1 billion in 2022.
Who is responsible for the Bybit hack attack?
Bybit or other officials have not yet made a statement, while security researchers Elliptic and Arkham Intelligence associate the attack with North Korean computer pirates of Lazarus Group. Security detective Zachbxt also found that the group behind the robbery was Lazarus.
Arkham Intelligence wrote that Zachbxt in X offers “definite evidence için that Lazarus Group is a perpetrator.
Will customers affected by the attack get back their money?
Zhou said in a statement on social media that the company would return their money to people affected by the attack. Bybit CEO said that there is more than 20 billion dollars under the management of the stock market and they have enough resources to secure user investments.
“Bybit, even if this loss of attack cannot be compensated, all assets of our customers are supported by 1 to 1, we can meet the loss,” he wrote. The money will be covered by the company or from the partners.
Following the hacking case, a major increase in withdrawal requests in Bybit. The stock market has announced that it has successfully completed more than 580,000 withdrawals since the attack on Saturday.
Research company Arkham Intelligence announced that the money stolen in his sharing on Friday X started to move to new addresses to be sold ”.
Bybit announced on Saturday that he launched a “Rescue Reward Program” to help with the funds back. The company announced that up to 10 percent of the amount of rescued to “ethical cyber and network safety experts ılan, which plays an active role in the recovery of stolen crypto currencies.
