London-based cryptocurrency exchange Cashaa suspended withdrawals for 24 hours after it reported that a hacker had stolen 336 Bitcoin (BTC) - worth $3.1 million - on July 11.
Cashaa CEO Kumar Gaurav said that the hacker is suspected to be Indian and from the eastern part of the nation’s capital Delhi. The exchange has filed a report to the investigators, with the suspicion that malware was responsible for compromising employee accounts.
On July 10, the malware allegedly informed the hacker when an employee logged into the account, and subsequently made two transfers from the wallet in question, which was created on Blockchain.com. Kumar also told CoinTelegraph that such incidents were exacerbated by exchanges that support trading and where hackers can send stolen funds.
As of today, hackers are very confident to hack crypto addresses and move it through exchanges that are facilitating such laundering through their systems. Exchanges like these must be shut down and owners of these exchanges should be charged with money laundering facilitation crime.
The safety and security of funds on cryptocurrency exchanges has been a major pain point for the industry, which continues to suffer from malicious attacks. Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are seen as a solution to this problem, but their relative newness and complexity leaves them considerably behind centralized exchanges. However, several new protocols, forming the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, have proven their value as the niche has seen rapid growth since the start of 2020.
