BREAKING NEWS 🚨
The largest crypto exchange in Iran, Nobitex, has been hacked. The losses are suspected to reach over US$81 million. And this isn’t just some ordinary hacker, hmm…
Okay, first off, Nobitex is the largest local crypto platform in Iran, established in 2017. It’s used by over 6 million users and serves as the main bridge between crypto and the Iranian rial (Iran’s currency).
It’s considered vulnerable due to its involvement in bypassing U.S. sanctions. Basically, imagine a country being blocked from global bank transfers. If you want to send money abroad, everything gets rejected. But with crypto? You can send it via Tron, swap it to a stablecoin, and cash out in another country. No wonder so many Iranians ended up using Nobitex.
How could it be hacked? Really? Who did it?
It started with a suspicious hot wallet transaction worth over Rp 200 billion (US$12.5 million). Then came a massive exploit of around US$73–81 million through Tron, BTC, DOGE, and EVM chains.
The perpetrators are a pro-Israel hacker group: “Gonjeshke Darande” (Predatory Sparrow), known for targeting Iranian infrastructure. (Source: reuters.com)
They threatened to leak source code and internal data.
They said: “We will leak Nobitex’s code and data within 24 hours. If there are still assets in there? Get ready for them to vanish!”
A lockdown occurred, the website & app were frozen, and hot wallets were disconnected.
Nobitex stated: “We are currently investigating, cold storage is safe.”
Their official statement admitted there was unauthorized access to hot wallets and to their infra reporting system (a sort of internal transaction monitoring #HackerAlert
