Cybercriminals stole $31 million (Rs 226 crores approx) in cryptocurrency by hacking into multi-chain decentralised exchange MonoX. The attack was first identified on December 1. MonoX Finance is a decentralised finance (DeFi) platform that is focused on developing infrastructure and products in order to simplify the overall use of Bitcoin, Ethereum along many other blockchains. The MonoX team confirmed the exploit on Twitter. The team tweeted: "Days like yesterday are horrible, there is no sugar coating the harsh reality of a contract being exploited and people losing money. Our supporters put their faith in a new project like us, and yesterday we let them down." Among the funds lost are $18.2 million in Ethereum and $10.5 million in Matic. There are also smaller quantities of several other tokens, including cryptocurrencies such as— Bitcoin, Chainlink, Unit Protocol, Aavegotchi, and Immutable X. It should be noted that Bitcoin is currently trading at $47,564 (roughly Rs 35 lakh) per coin, Ethereum’s present value is $3,974 (roughly Rs 2.90 lakh) per token. Meanwhile, this is not the first time that cybercriminals have attacked DeFi platforms. Earlier, last week, hackers stole $120.3 million (roughly Rs 900 crore) in cryptocurrency by hacking into decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol Badger DAO. The attack was identified on November 1. The hack, first discovered by blockchain security firm PeckShield, tracked down the missing funds. According to the security firm, the company lost at least 2,100 Bitcoin and 151 Ethereum. In August, hackers pulled off the biggest ever cryptocurrency heist, stealing $613 million in digital coins from token-swapping platform Poly Network, only to return $260 million worth of tokens less than 24 hours later.
