Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX has suffered a major security breach involving one of its multi-signature wallets, resulting in the platform losing over $230 million in crypto assets.

Hacker kidnapped SHIB tokens worth $100 million, 15,290 ETH worth $52 million, and 20 million MATIC worth $11 million. In addition, the attacker managed to withdraw 640 billion PEPE tokens worth $7.5 million, 5.7 million USDT stablecoins, and 135 million GALA worth $3.5 million.

WazirX management has acknowledged the security breach. The exchange has suspended all cryptocurrency and Indian rupee withdrawals pending an investigation into the incident. WazirX announced that the team is actively working to resolve the issue.

Blocksec co-founder Yajin Zhou suggested that the exploit may have resulted from a compromised private key. The hacker used the leaked key to upgrade a multi-signature wallet containing a large amount of crypto assets to a malicious contract, and then withdrew most of the assets from Safe Wallet.

Elliptic Analytics Company assumedthat North Korean hackers were involved in the hack. After the exploit, the stolen funds were transferred to a new address using the crypto mixer Tornado Cash. The hackers have already exchanged the stolen assets for ethers using various decentralized services.

The incident had an immediate impact on the cryptocurrency market. WazirX’s native token, WRX, plummeted by 15% to $0.14. SHIB lost more than 6% in dollar terms and 16% against the Indian rupee (INR). Some crypto assets also suffered significant losses in INR trading pairs on WazirX. For example, Bitcoin against the rupee (BTC/INR) fell by 11% on the exchange to $60,945.

According to PeckShield analysts, hackers stole $176.2 million from cryptocurrency trading platforms in June alone. The largest hack in June was on the Turkish crypto exchange BtcTurk, which lost $100.25 million.