Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX confirms $44 million stolen during hack

In a significant security breach, CoinDCX, India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has reported that hackers managed to infiltrate one of its internal operational accounts, resulting in a staggering loss of approximately $44 million in digital assets. On Saturday, co-founder and CEO Sumit Gupta took to X to clarify that the compromised account was solely utilized for liquidity provisioning on a partner exchange. He reassured customers that their funds remain intact and secure, unaffected by this incident. Crypto security expert ZachXBT first brought attention to the breach, revealing that around $44.2 million had been siphoned from CoinDCX’s accounts. According to ZachXBT, the hacker’s address was funded using 1ETH through Tornado Cash, which was later bridged, moving part of the stolen assets from Solana to Ethereum. CoinDCX corroborated the loss to TechCrunch, detailing that the stolen funds were funneled through Solana-Ethereum bridges and are now consolidated into 4,443 Ethereum and 155,830 Solana tokens, which remain inactive. The exchange is currently collaborating with India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and other partner exchanges to probe the breach further. Gupta emphasized that the company acted swiftly to isolate the affected operational account, limiting exposure solely to that account, which will be fully covered by the company's treasury reserves. In response to the attack, CoinDCX has initiated a “recovery bounty” program, promising up to 25% of any recovered funds to individuals who assist in tracing and reclaiming the stolen cryptocurrency. "Beyond recovering the stolen assets, our priority is to identify and apprehend the attackers to prevent future incidents," Gupta stated, highlighting the need for security in the industry. This breach comes nearly a year after a massive cyberattack on another Indian crypto platform, WazirX, which lost $230 million — a shocking event that halted trading on the exchange. The relationship, if any, between the two breaches remains uncertain.