India’s BWA Moves to Prevent Future WazirX Mishaps

Coinspeaker
India’s BWA Moves to Prevent Future WazirX Mishaps

The recent WazirX hack has led India’s Bharat Web3 Association (BWA) to launch an initiative that is focused on enhancing cybersecurity and consumer protection within the crypto industry. The BWA, under the leadership of Dilip Chenoy, announced the launch of two new internal groups that will include members of the bloc.

These are representatives from Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN), Polygon, CoinSwitch, Liminal, Biconomy, Tax Nodes, Giottus, Hike and even WazirX. CoinDCX, a core WazirX competitor, is billed to join the other exchanges. The group includes Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) from the different member firms of the BWA. These security officers will make an effort to design Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and solutions to prevent hacking recurrence.

Both internal groups will channel their dedication to improving the security of the Indian crypto space.

Moreover, the first assignment of these groups is to investigate the recent $230 million WazirX security breach. One of their key responsibilities is to review and update existing consumer code guidelines while addressing the current cybersecurity challenges.

“The industry body has been monitoring the situation and has been in touch with both the members involved – WazirX and Liminal,” BWA Chair Chenoy stated. “We have asked both of them to do a complete forensic analysis and root cause analysis on the issue and evaluate the legal and remedial actions that can be taken post this incident.”

Also, a third-party evaluation of the forensic report has become necessary to ensure impartiality and thoroughness.

According to Chenoy, the BWA focused significantly on Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) registration and Anti-money Laundering (AML) issues before now. However, the tragedy that befell WazirX necessitated a pivot and change of priorities.

Currently, the bloc is concerned about implementing robust cybersecurity measures.

For a background into WazirX’s multisig wallet hack, Web 3.0 security firm Cyvers detected suspicious transactions on the India crypto exchange almost two weeks ago. It immediately attempted to contact WazirX but the perpetrator had made away with more than $230 million in cryptocurrencies. This represented 45% of the total customer deposit on the platform.

The stolen assets include Tether (USDT), Pepe (PEPE), and Gala (GALA), which the hacker converted into Ethereum (ETH) almost immediately. In an updated analysis, Lookonchain noted that the stolen funds are $102 million in Shiba Inu (SHIB), $52.5 million in Ethereum, $11.24 million in Polygon (MATIC), $7.6 million in PEPE, $135 million in USDT and $3.5 million in Gala (GALA).

The hacker converted all stolen altcoins into Ethereum, just before the US SEC gave approval for spot Ethereum ETF trading. Upon completing the conversion, the hacker began to transfer the stolen assets to new crypto wallets. On July 22, blockchain security firm PeckShield reported that the hacker moved 16,350 Ethereum, worth over $57 million, into two new crypto wallets.

WazirX already launched two bounty programs. One involves a $10,000 prize money in Tether for information that leads to freezing the stolen funds. The second is a “white hat recovery” bounty of 10% of the recovered fund.

So far, none of these programs have yielded results. However, the BWA effort may do better.

India’s BWA Moves to Prevent Future WazirX Mishaps