Police in India have identified the method of hacking into the CoinDCX crypto exchange for $44 million

What’s new? Police investigating the $44 million cryptocurrency theft from the crypto exchange CoinDCX, run by Bangalore-based Neblio Technologies have identified the way it was hacked. According to law enforcers, the hackers installed malware on the company laptop of employee Rahul Agarwal, who has been working at CoinDCX for the last three years and was arrested after the attack.

Material by Indian Express

What else is known? In a statement to the police, Neblio Technologies vice president of policy and government relations Hardeep Singh said that on July 19, someone hacked into the company’s wallet and transferred 3,852 billion rupees worth of cryptocurrency to six accounts.

Police revealed that the hackers had contacted Rahul Agarwal on the pretext of providing a part-time job. On their instructions, Agarwal, who held a senior position at CoinDCX, wrote reviews and performed other online tasks for a high fee.

According to the officer, Agarwal initially used his personal laptop but later switched to a company laptop where the hackers installed malware without his knowledge. This way they accessed CoinDCX and transferred money from the exchange’s wallet.

Police said:

“Agarwal was totally in the dark about the theft that has happened by hacking into his laptop. It was late for him to realise that he was used as a tool to siphon such a huge amount of cryptocurrency.”

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An internal investigation revealed that Agarwal had earned about 1,5 million rupees ($17 000), and when the company approached him with a claim, he attributed it to part-time income.

Police said they experienced difficulty in tracing the movement of funds because cryptocurrencies are largely unregulated in India. Thus, the hackers’ wallets were not created in India, and it was only possible to discover the evidence with the help of crypto exchanges that provided data on these wallets.

On July 21, CoinDCX launched a reward program, under which it pledged to pay blockchain analysts 25% of the recovered funds. Thus, the total remuneration may reach $11 million.