On the evening of February 21, Bybit, one of the world's leading cryptocurrency exchanges, was hacked and assets including 400,000 ETH and some tokens related to this currency were stolen, estimated to be worth up to 1.46 billion USD.

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Illustration photo.

The hack was discovered by ZachXBT, a blockchain transaction investigator. He said on Telegram that he had detected a suspicious amount of cryptocurrency being withdrawn from Bybit with the above total value.

After the hacking information appeared on social networking platforms around the world, Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit spoke up on X to confirm. Accordingly, the hacker attacked a cold wallet containing ETH of the exchange, while other hot wallets and cold wallets were still safe.

According to Ben Zhou, Bybit made a transaction to transfer ETH from a cold wallet to a hot wallet, however, this transaction was impersonated by hackers who impersonated the signature interface to confirm the transfer of funds between the two wallets.

This caused the signers to accidentally sign an order that changed the smart contract logic of the cold wallet, giving the hacker complete control of the wallet and draining all the ETH to an unknown address.

Bybit CEO also conducted a livestream to reassure users that other cold wallets and hot wallets are currently unaffected and withdrawals on Bybit are still completely normal.

Ben Zhou stressed that the exchange has enough assets to cover all losses from the hack, even if the lost funds are not recovered.

“Bybit is fully capable of compensating for damages, all customer assets are guaranteed, we will update when there are new developments,” Bybit CEO affirmed.

The hack was also officially announced and confirmed on the Bybit exchange. The exchange's security team is currently working with leading experts in the security field and partners in the blockchain industry to investigate the incident.

Bybit also called for the support of experienced experts to analyze on-chain data and trace the flow of funds to quickly recover the stolen assets.

The hack has affected the cryptocurrency market, but not significantly as the ETH price has only decreased by about 3% in the past 24 hours and the Bitcoin price has also decreased slightly by a few thousand USD.

Notably, Bybit was hacked right after CEO Ben Zhou condemned Pi Network as a scam and illegal project, with no transparency from the team.

The CEO also cited a warning article about the Pi Network project from Chinese police in 2023, accusing the project of being a fraudulent pyramid scheme, targeting the elderly to collect personal data and appropriate assets.