Ascendex, a cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a security breach that allowed hackers to take control of some of the wallets of the exchange. The attack focused on hot wallets, where funds are kept as a buffer to tend to customers’ withdrawals. The company announced that it would reimburse these funds to any affected user. Peckshield, a security and auditing company estimated losses of around $77 million.
Ascendex Hot Wallets Ransacked
Yesterday, Ascendex, a cryptocurrency exchange, reported a security breach caused by a hacking attack that focused on the exchange’s hot wallets. The company recognized the attack quickly and applied a series of security procedures to protect its cold wallets. Although the exchange has not released figures on the attack, Peckshield, a security and blockchain auditing firm, has looked into the hack and valued losses to about $ 77 million.
The hack targeted hot wallets of the Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon networks, with the most value being withdrawn in ERC20 tokens. $60 million worth of these tokens were stolen in the hack, followed by $9.2 million in BSC tokens and $8.5 million in Polygon tokens. Peckshield provided a detailed report of which tokens were stolen and how much was stolen in each token.
Ascendex response
Ascendex Posted a statement about the event and informed the public of the actions they will take after the hack. First of all, Ascendex will refund any stolen funds to affected users, as it has stated that “affected assets represent a relatively small percentage of total exchange assets.” The exchange moved the unaffected assets to its cold wallets and has since suspended withdrawals for its clients.
The second part of its response to this hack has to do with the investigation of how this happened and who might be the party behind it. In this sense, the company informed it is already working with blockchain forensic firms and law enforcement to ascertain what really happened and to block the stolen funds from being freely transferred between exchanges.
Ascendex also reported that small projects have been affected by this hack and some of them are studying to reissue tokens to holders. This affects low liquidity and new listed projects. This is the second high-profile hack to hit centralized exchanges in December. Bitmart, another cryptocurrency exchange, lost $ 200 million in an attack on December 6.
