Evgeny Gaevoy, Co-Founder of Wintermute, claimed on Twitter on Tuesday that Wintermute has lost the nine-figure money via its DeFi activities. He stated that the company was still solvent and stable, and its centralized and over-the-counter operations were unaffected.
According to Gaevoy, Ninety different assets were taken. Two of the valuables lost were valued at around $1 million and $2.5 million. The proceeds from the other 88 were each worth less than $1 million.
We’ve been hacked for about $160M in our defi operations. Cefi and OTC operations are not affected
— wishful cynic (@EvgenyGaevoy) September 20, 2022
Wintermute is a cryptocurrency market maker. It improves market efficiency by increasing liquidity across both controlled and decentralised trading platforms. It also provides an over-the-counter service for institutions and wealthy people.
Mudit Gupta, Polygon’s chief information security officer, tweeted and blogged about the intrusion early Tuesday, suspecting it was a “hot wallet compromise.” Wintermute recently reported a Profanity flaw, which may have prompted some hackers to attack the company, according to Gupta.
BREAKING: #Crypto market maker Wintermute has been hacked with over $160,000,000 stolen.
— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) September 20, 2022
According to Zapper data, on-chain researcher zachxbt revealed the hacker’s wallet over Twitter, referring to an Ethereum address that currently contains $163 million in digital assets.
Most of the money has been transferred into the tricrypto pool at Curve Finance, a common tactic for hackers who don’t plan to return the money they stole (because stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle can’t freeze funds after they’ve been added to decentralised exchange liquidity pools).
Gaevoy further said that the company would be pleased to regard the breach as a white hat assault and extended an invitation to the hacker to come forward as part of the first disclosure.
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