WazirX Now Needs 8-Hour System Outage to Restore Balance After Hack
WazirX, one of the greatest cryptocurrency exchanges in India, has scheduled an eight-hour system outage to restore account balances and undo unauthorized trades after a large security mishap and its announcement.
The scheduled maintenance is going to be from 6 PM to 2 AM IST on August 15th to August 16th. In that time, all the services of the platform, like trading, deposits, and withdraw will be temporary unavailable. This operation is an attempt to recover from the major hack that happened on July 18th, 2024, and resulted in the loss of approximately $234 million in user funds.
Balance Recovery through Maintenance
WazirX communicated to the community using its social media that the platform would be under an extensive maintaining period to restore the amount of balances back to their positions before the breach took place.
To do this, they will be rolling back every single deal made on the WazirX platform after the hacking was detected, and the withdrawals were stopped at 1 PM IST on July 18th.
It was after careful evaluation of user feedback and a detailed examination of the breach period transactions that the banning of the platform, the ban lifting, and the restoration of the correct user balances were decided. WazirX has committed to the users that their accounts will recover their initial state after the hack.
Moreover, they have made a commitment to undo all the problematic transactions and restore balances to be the same as they were pre-hack, if any crypto-to-INR or crypto-to-crypto trades were made during the compromised time.
The response of WazirX to the concerns of the users is that the fees, referrals, and tax deductions refunded to the affected trades will be credited to the users’ accounts. This breakdown is crucial in the persuasive WazirX campaign to minimize the loss and win the users’ trust back.
Even though the platform is not yet back to normal operations, such as fund withdrawals and asset trading, it is still focused on the security and accounting accuracy for the user accounts. Besides, WazirX has promised that it will keep everybody informed about the recovery process and subsequent steps required for the platform’s integrity.
WazirX Hack: The Greatest Attack Ever in Q2 on Indian Crypto.
The cyber robbery, which took place on July 18th, 2024, was the highest rate of breach in the cryptocurrency Indian sector.
The ability of the hackers to exploit a false Safe Multisig wallet from WazirX on Ethereum blockchain was their channel to seize the IT equipments that amounted to $234 million. The attacker transfer was done in multiple transactions, which sent funds to new addresses
The thief quickly converted most of the cash to Ether (ETH), which added another layer of complexity to the financial loss for WazirX and its users. The perpetrator’s purse is known to contain around 64705 ETH, the value of which is approximately $201.5 million.
In addition, the hacker retains the sum of 15 million dollars in various other cryptocurrencies, the chief of which are Dent, Chromia, Celer Network, and Frontier tokens.
As soon as the breach occurred, WazirX made a pause of all withdrawals and they started to investigate. The first information from Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm, suggests that the hack could be by hackers related to North Korea, which is known for its advanced techniques and the frequent financial of cryptocurrency exchanges to support the regime.
Significantly, the company has not only collaborated with the police but also with the experts of the blockchain system to be able to track the stolen assets and catch the hackers. Along with the review of its security protocols, WazirX’s reaction included the introduction of a number of new controls to safeguard client funds.
The process of recovering losses and correcting trades that were made is certainly a step in the right direction, but WazirX still has a very tough time ahead if it wants to gain back the confidence of users and to keep its name as the top cryptocurrency exchange in India.
