Crypto exchange BitMart has suffered a “large-scale” data breach that has resulted in the attackers stealing over $150 million in funds from the exchange. 

The company made an announcement detailing the incident. Later, Sheldon Xia, Founder and CEO of BitMart, stated that they have completed initial security checks and identified affected assets. The breach was caused by a stolen private key that compromised two of the company’s hot wallets. 

BitMart will use its funding to compensate affected users to cover the incident. As of now, all withdrawals from the platform are suspended until further notice. 

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Small assets, big price

According to the update put out by the company, the affected ETH and BSC hot wallets carry a small percentage of assets on the platform. The company assured customers that all other wallets were safe and unaffected by the breach. 

The affected crypto exchange also warned customers against any scammers out in the wild and stay alert to any phishing emails that they may receive, potentially trying to scam customers by acting as security updates or countermeasures sent by the company asking for personal or financial details.

Xia has assured users on Twitter that they are confident that deposit and withdrawal functionalities will start functioning by December 7, with a detailed timeline to be announced soon.

BitMart is the latest victim in a chain of security or data breaches happening at leading crypto exchanges. BadgerDAO lost $120 million to a security breach on December 2, and MonoX lost about $31 million after attackers exploited a bug in the company’s smart contracts on November 27. 

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