WazirX, the Mumbai-headquartered cryptocurrency exchange that faced a $230-million (roughly Rs 1,964 crore) wallet breach, has announced a $23-million (roughly Rs 192 crore) bounty programme to retrieve stolen assets. The attack compromised the exchange's multisig wallet, leading to substantial losses.
WazirX co-founder Nischal Shetty has been vocal about the need for community involvement to track and recover the stolen funds.
$23-Million Bounty
The bounty programme on social media platform X, stresses the importance of global cooperation. Initially, the reward was set at $11.5 million, but it was later doubled to incentivise broader participation.
The bounty programme is divided into two main initiatives. The "Track & Freeze" initiative offers rewards of up to $10,000 in USDT for information that leads to the freezing of the stolen assets. The "White Hat Recovery" initiative promises ethical hackers a 5 per cent reward of the recovered amount.
This bounty programme will be active for three months, although the duration may be adjusted based on the progress and requirements, as per WazirX.
Shetty clarified that the breach did not result from a phishing attack but involved multiple hardware wallets and signatories, including three from WazirX and one from Liminal, their custody provider. Liminal confirmed that their platform was secure, attributing the malicious transactions to compromised WazirX machines.
In response to the breach, WazirX has filed a police complaint and reported the incident to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In). The exchange has also contacted over 500 other exchanges to block the identified addresses associated with the stolen funds.
This coordinated effort highlights the significance of community participation and cross-border collaboration in addressing cyber threats in the cryptocurrency sector.
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