BtcTurk Faces $48M Multi-Chain Exploit, Halts Withdrawals

BtcTurk Halts Withdrawals Amid Ongoing Hack

BtcTurk, a Turkish cryptocurrency exchange, is under a suspected multi-chain exploit with estimated losses reaching up to $48 million.

Deposits and withdrawals in the exchange have been halted with trading and local currency activities running as usual.

https://x.com/CyversAlerts/status/1955967877602803929

The suspicious activity was noticed by blockchain security platform Cyvers and involved several networks and transfers of large amounts of assets to wallets controlled by the attacker.

Details of the BtcTurk Attack

The exploit targeted Ethereum, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Mantle, and Polygon networks, and the majority of the funds were concentrated in two main addresses.

A compromised wallet had swaps in MetaMask to turn stolen tokens into ETH within a short period of time, which indicates an attempt at centralizing funds.

One compromised wallet used MetaMask swaps to quickly convert stolen assets into ETH, suggesting an effort to centralize funds. 

Even though the user transactions were suspended, the hot wallet was still transferring the assets to the addresses of the attacker, indicating full compromise.

Cumulative losses can surpass $50 million as tokens keep flowing into the wallets of the attacker, and new assets moved at regular intervals

On Solana, funds went through a wallet labelled PNUT Whale and ended up in an account with $6.09 million.

Impact and Ongoing Investigation

The stolen assets are SOL, stablecoins, and liquid meme coins, which can be exchanged in decentralized exchanges but can be traced on-chain.

More than $34 million worth of ETH was distributed between two wallets, as well as L2 tokens of Optimism, Arbitrum, and Mantle.

BtcTurk has a daily volume of approximately $300 million, 75% of which is traded against the Turkish lira and more than 70% in low-liquidity tokens.

The hack occurs during a wave of crypto security breaches since July, with most of them not involving centralised exchanges but DeFi protocols.

The broader cryptocurrency market responded in a negative manner as BTC declined to $117,700 after being above 124,000, ETH declined to 4,440, and SOL declined to 187.

OP had sharper drop because stolen tokens were forcefully exchanged into ETH.

BtcTurk is collaborating with blockchain security companies in tracking the stolen funds and locating the hacker. The exchange has not clarified the time at which it will resume deposit and withdrawal services.