bybit Says There's Nothing to Worry About as $1,4 Billion Theft Shocks Crypto Community

The first to discover suspicious transactions was crypto detective ZachXBT. He stated that the crypto exchange bybit 401 ETH worth $346 billion were withdrawn

Crypto detective ZachXBT was the first to discover suspicious transactions. He stated that 401 ETH, valued at $346 billion, were withdrawn from the Bybit crypto exchange and transferred to an unidentified wallet.

To avoid being tracked, the hackers spread the stolen assets across multiple addresses. ZachXBT shared a list of these addresses on his official Telegram channel and urged exchanges to blacklist them.

Later, Ben Zhou, the exchange's co-founder and CEO, confirmed the hack but clarified that the hacker had gained control of a specific ETH cold wallet.

“Rest assured that all other cold wallets are protected. All withdrawals are proceeding as usual. I will keep you updated as the situation develops. If any team can help us track down the stolen funds, we would be grateful,” Zhou stated.

Meanwhile, the crypto exchange team described how the incident unfolded.

“The incident occurred when our multi-signature cold ETH wallet executed a transfer to our hot wallet. Unfortunately, this transaction was compromised in a sophisticated attack that masked the signing interface, displaying the correct address while modifying the smart contract logic,” Bybit reported.

The crypto exchange CEO also reassured users that the platform is fully solvent and that all assets on deposit are backed 1:1.

Despite Bybit management's assurances, the $1.4 billion theft has sent shockwaves through the crypto community.

“This makes it the biggest crypto heist of all time by a large margin, with the next biggest being the $611 million theft from Poly Network in 2021,” Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson told The Block.

When asked how many users were affected by the hack, the trading platform team responded, "It affects everyone. It will be difficult to withdraw Ethereum now."