The global digital assets market woke up to another exploit as one of Indonesia’s biggest crypto exchanges, Indodax got hacked for around $20 million in an intense turn of events. The cumulative crypto market declined marginally to remain under the $2 trillion mark as the selling pressure spikes.
Cyvers Alerts issued an alert to Indodax suggesting that its system detected multiple suspicious transactions involving the exchange’s wallets on different networks. It mentioned that a suspicious address was holding $14.4 million USD and was caught swapping the tokens for Ether.
It later added that they detected more than 150 such transactions and the total loss had breached $18.2 billion.
Indodax issues advisory
The hacked crypto exchange made announcements for its members and community. Indodax accepted that its security team had discovered a potential security issue on the platform. It highlighted that the team is conducting complete maintenance to ensure the entire system is operating properly. Meanwhile, the Indodax web platform and application are temporarily inaccessible during the maintenance process.
Harap berhati-hati terhadap penipuan yang mengatasnamakan INDODAX!
Kami informasikan untuk berhati-hati terhadap ajakan refund dana INDODAX maupun permintaan data pribadi kamu. INDODAX akan berjalan normal kembali segera setelah maintenance selesai. Informasi terupdate tentang… pic.twitter.com/jAGWepmKtz
— indodax (@indodax) September 11, 2024
It later issued an advisory regarding the hack and asked the traders to be careful of INDODAX fund and refund invitations or requests for their personal data. The exchange suggested that they will run normally again as soon as the maintenance is complete.
Hackers looted $20M of crypto
As per the data shared by Spot On Chain, the hacker has looted around $20 million worth of crypto assets from the Indonesian exchange. The hacker went on to swap most of the stolen assets for major cryptocurrencies.
The exploiter reportedly parked 5,584 Ether (approximately $13 million) on Ethereum and Optimism. He also swapped the crypto assets to POL (MATIC), TRON (TRX), and Bitcoin (BTC). Multiple wallets are holding $2.56 million worth of POL, $2.55 million of TRX, and $1.41 million in BTC.
Bitcoin and Ether recorded a marginal decline over the last day as the hacker swapped the stolen funds. ETH is trading at an average price of $2,335, while BTC stands at $56,532.
Crypto scams on a massive rise
Frauds and hack losses linked to crypto have skyrocketed to almost $4 billion in 2023, a massive 53% increase from last year. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reportedly received over 69,000 complaints related to crypto frauds last year.
Investment frauds are the leading culprits in this tally, accounting for nearly 71% of all crypto-related losses. Crypto ATMs have also emerged as a popular tool for fraudsters. Over 5,500 complaints and losses exceeding $189 million were reported in the same period.