WazirX hackers were preparing 8 days before the $235M theft
The hackers behind the $235 million WazirX crypto exchange breach began preparing onchain at least eight days prior, according to Polygon Labs’s security chief.
WazirX, one of India’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, lost hundreds of millions to a multisig wallet hack on Thursday, July 18, which is being blamed on North Korean hacking organization Lazarus Group.
Mudit Gupta, the Chief Information Security Officer of Polygon Labs, suggests the hackers had started “practicing” the hack onchain more than a week prior to executing the attack.
It started with hackers upgrading the multisig to a malicious version that would later allow them to drain it, Gupta explained in a July 18 post on X.
(Mudit Gupta)
Tarun Mangukiya, the co-founder of payment platform Copperx, believes the hackers may have tricked WazirX into upgrading its Safe Implementation Skeleton.
“Why did they upgrade it instead of just draining?” Gupta asked rhetorically.
“Draining takes time and multiple transaction. They likely didn’t have access to all the required private keys and were dependent on signature phishing which they can’t do multiple times without getting caught.”
In a follow-up post on X, WazirX has described the attack as a “force majeure event beyond our control.”
“We have already blocked a few deposits and reached out to concerned wallets for recovery,” it added.
The exchange announced a temporary withdrawal freeze soon after the hack.
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