Cybercriminals have stolen almost 1.5 billion dollars from the crypto exchange Bybit. This is the largest known crypto heist of all time.
Last Friday, news of a crypto heist startled investors. The cryptocurrency exchange Bybit announced, that an attacker had gained control of an ether wallet and transferred holdings worth around 1.5 billion dollars to an unidentified address.
The hack took place during the transfer of digital currency units from a «cold wallet», a wallet held offline for storage purposes, to a «warm wallet» for trading purposes, according to a post by the company.
This is actually a routine process. However, the attackers found a security vulnerability and exploited it. They succeeded in faking an authorized address for the signatories of the transaction, while the destination was then changed unnoticed to an unknown address during the signature process.
Customer Funds Safe - Bybit Solvent
The Ether-Cold wallet was the only one that was attacked. None of the exchange's other wallets were affected. Withdrawals for customers would work normally, Bybit-CEO Ben Zhou reassured.
«All customer funds are safe and our operations are continuing as usual without interruption,» the company said. The security team would investigate the incident together with forensic experts.
«Bybit is solvent even if this hack loss is not recovered, all customer assets are secured 1 to 1, we can cover the loss,» Zhou said.
More than 60 Million Users Globally
Bybit has more than 60 million users worldwide and offers access to various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ether. The company is based in Dubai and recently managed cryptocurrencies worth more than 16 billion dollars. According to «CoinMarketCap», this value has now fallen to less than 12 billion dollars. In comparison: Binance has a value of 152 billion dollars.
A hack at Ronin Network was previously considered the biggest crypto heist. In 2022, digital currencies worth 624 million dollars were stolen here. In 2024 as a whole, around 2.2 billion dollars worth of crypto money is said to have been stolen worldwide.
Also on Friday, the US crypto exchange Coinbase announced that the SEC would discontinue its investigation into the company. The regulatory authority has announced the review of a number of proceedings. President Donald Trump had nominated Paul Atkins as the new head of the SEC, who is considered a crypto advocate.
