AscendEX loses $80M following ERC-20, BSC, Polygon hot wallet compromise

Out of the lot, around $60 meg worth of tokens were transferred over the Ethereum blockchain alone. Tokens stolen from BSC and Polygon are worth $nine.2 meg and $viii.5 million, respectively.

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AscendEX loses $80M following ERC-20, BSC, Polygon hot wallet compromise

Crypto trading platform AscendEX suffered a loss of $77.7 1000000 in a hot wallet compromise that allowed hackers to access and transfer tokens hosted over the Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Polygon blockchains.

Soon after the realization, AscendEX proactively warned its users near the stolen funds, confirming that the hackers were not able to access the company's cold wallet reserves.

22:00 UTC 12/11, We take detected a number of ERC-20, BSC, and Polygon tokens transferred from our hot wallet. Cold Wallet is Not affected. Investigation underway. If any user's funds are affected by the incident, they will be covered completely by AscendEX.
— AscendEX (@AscendEX_Global) December 12, 2022

According to PeckShield, a blockchain security and data analytics company, around $60 one thousand thousand worth of tokens were transferred over the Ethereum blockchain. Tokens stolen from the Binance Smart Chain and Polygon are worth $9.2 million and $8.five one thousand thousand, respectively, as evidenced by EtherScan data.

Estimated loss @AscendEX_Global: $77.7M in total ($60M on @ethereum $9.2M @BinanceChain $viii.5M @0xPolygon). Here is the list of the transferred-out assets and their amounts on @ethereum pic.twitter.com/VC4DKOwu4f
— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) December 12, 2022

Some of the popular tokens stolen in this hack include USD Coin (USDC), Tether (USDT) and Shiba Inu (SHIB). Yet, AscendEX is yet to officially ostend the exact worth of the tokens taken away by the hackers.

The company as well announced to assistance the affected users by covering upwardly their losses due to this attack.

Related: Bitmart hacked for $200M post-obit Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain exploit

Only last week on December. 5, a similar assail on crypto commutation BitMart resulted in a loss of about $200 one thousand thousand due to a hot wallet compromise hosted over the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain blockchains.

As reported by Cointelegraph, the hack was a straightforward example of transfer-out, swap and wash:

Transfer of stolen tokens on Bitmart. Source: PeckShield

While BitMart CEO Sheldon Xia confirmed the losses over Twitter, he announced a temporary end on all withdrawals and deposits while further investigations were underway.

The deposit and withdrawal function of all tokens will be resumed pace by step, along with the recovery progress of security testing and public chain development. No worries, we are marching frontward, security will be ever the get-go priority.
— Sheldon Xia (@sheldonbitmart) Dec viii, 2022