Cryptocurrency exchange platform Bybit has been robbed of over $1.46 billion worth of Ethereum. Cybersecurity experts are calling it the largest theft on a cryptocurrency platform ever.
Ben Zhou, CEO and co-founder of Bybit, confirmed the robbery on X.
According to the Dubai-based company, the incident occurred when the company was moving funds from a so-called “cold wallet” to an online “hot wallet.” A cold wallet is a crypto wallet whose private keys are kept offline for security reasons.
“Unfortunately, this transaction was manipulated through a sophisticated attack that masked the signing interface, displaying the correct address while altering the underlying smart contract logic. As a result, the attacker was able to gain control of the affected ETH cold wallet and transfer its holdings to an unidentified address,” Bybit explains.
The cryptocurrency exchange platform says its security team is actively investigating the incident alongside “leading blockchain forensic experts and partners.” Anyone with knowledge of blockchain analytics is welcome to collaborate.
Zhou assures its customers that all other cold wallets are secure. In a live stream, he told listeners that 401,000 Ethereum coins were stolen. As of last Friday, the haul was worth about $1.46 billion.
In addition, he said Bybit has taken out bridge loans from partners to cover 80% of the stolen cryptocurrency.
Blockchain expert @zachxbt says he has proof that the Lazarus Group was behind the attack. The North Korean ransomware operation has been linked to numerous thefts of bitcoin wallets, including the theft of 4,500 bitcoins in May 2024 that belonged to Japanese cryptocurrency company DMM.
Tim Robinson, co-founder and chief scientist at crypto security firm Elliptic, told TechCrunch that this is the largest known crypto theft to date. The previous highest crypto breaches were the hacks against the Ronin Network and Poly Network, which resulted in the loss of $624 million and $611 million, respectively.
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