BitBNS Hack

BitBNS, an Indian crypto exchange, lost about $7.5 million in a hack on February 1, 2022, and kept it from users for more than a year. At the time, the exchange went offline and told users it was doing "system maintenance", in a way that suggested problems with Amazon Web Services.

The incident became public on February 28, 2023, when on-chain investigator ZachXBT accused BitBNS of hiding a $7.5 million hack behind the maintenance notice. Founder Gaurav Dahake admitted the breach the next day but did not confirm the exact figure. He said the team took the exchange offline after seeing abnormally high server throughput, wrong prices and buy/sell spreads for MATIC, BNB and AAVE, and unusual withdrawals. Tokens from the platform were sent to one address, swapped into ETH and spread across several addresses.

Dahake said BitBNS reported the incident to law enforcement right away and was told to tell users only once the investigation ended or went nowhere. Cyber Crime Bengaluru was handling the case. He said some funds were recovered with help from the authorities and other exchanges but gave no amount. BitBNS has not published how the attacker got access to its systems or keys.