Update Sept. 20, 1:50 pm UTC: This article has been updated to include Beosin’s estimate.
Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange BingX’s estimated loss from a suspected hack on Sept. 20 has surpassed $52 million, double the earlier reported $26 million.
In earlier reports, blockchain security firm PeckShield identified one Ethereum wallet linked to the attack, which received $26.7 million in assets from BingX.
The total loss climbed after further investigations revealed substantial damages across multiple blockchain networks.
“As more wallets are identified, the total loss grows. Initial estimates, like $13 million, were likely incomplete, but updates from forensics firms, now reporting figures like $43 million, show a clearer picture,” Hakan Unal, senior security operations lead at Cyvers Alerts, told Cointelegraph.
Source: Cyvers Alert
“Our threat intelligence system has summed the total loss across all chains, leading to a more comprehensive estimate of $52 million,” Unal said.
The loss estimate from Cyvers is at the higher end among security experts. Beosin provided Cointelegraph with a lower estimate of $45 million stolen across three funding lines.
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BingX downplayed the incident, describing the cyberattack as causing only “minor” losses.
“All user losses from this hack will be fully covered by BingX’s own capital,” Vivien Lin, product chief at BingX, said in a statement to Cointelegraph.
Lin added that security firms had assisted in freezing approximately $1 million of the stolen funds at the time of writing. BingX is still calculating its total losses.
Surge in hacks targeting Asian crypto exchanges
BingX’s breach comes amid a surge in cyberattacks targeting centralized cryptocurrency exchanges in Asia.
Indonesian exchange Indodax suffered a $20.58 million hack on Sept. 10.
Indian exchange WazirX was also targeted in a major breach, losing $234.9 million on July 18.
Japan’s DMM Bitcoin experienced the largest attack of 2024 so far, with hackers stealing $305 million in assets on May 31.
Security experts have blamed North Korea’s state-backed Lazarus Group for the attacks on Indodax, WazirX and DMM.
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