Bybit Hack Aftermath: Single Whale Liquidated for $46M as BTC Dumps by $4K

As the details around perhaps the largest hack in the cryptocurrency industry continue to unravel, BTC’s price has started to crash once again, falling by over four grand since today’s peak.

With the altcoins in a similar state, it’s no wonder that the total value of liquidated positions has skyrocketed to over $600 million on a daily scale.

Recall the events that took place earlier today when reports emerged about suspicious transfers made from Bybit’s hot wallets. Later on, it was confirmed by the company’s CEO, Ben Zhou, that the incident was indeed a hack that had drained its wallet with around $1.4 billion in ETH.

Despite claiming that the exchange, which is one of the largest in terms of global trading volumes, is still solvent, he later admitted that the team had registered “massive withdrawal” requests after the incident.

“It seems that Bybit ‘s ETH multisig cold wallet was compromised through a deceptive transaction that tricked signers into unknowingly approving a malicious smart contract logic change,” – explained the security company Cyvers.

In another message to CryptoPotato, Cyvers’ team said the attacker deployed a malicious contract two days before the hack to the Bybit signers’ devices. When trying to initiate legitimate transactions, the malware acts like the middleman and sends a malicious payload to the hardware wallets. Bybit’s team signs that payload and doesn’t see it due to “blind signing on hardware wallets.”

The attacker then reimplements the safe wallet and delegates the calls to their malicious contract, at which point no additional signatures are needed, and the perpetrator controls the wallet.

The hack, which is described as the largest in the crypto industry, had a dramatic effect on the entire market. BTC had climbed toward $100,000 but was quickly rejected and pushed south by two grand.

After an initial bounce-off, the asset reverted its trajectory and slumped to $95,000, thus losing over $4,000 since the attack. The altcoins suffered even more, with XRP, DOGE, and ADA down by over 6% within the past 24 hours.

The liquidations have shot up to more than $600 million, according to CoinGlass. The single-largest wrecked order took place on HTC and was worth a whopping $45.8 million.

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