An worker of CoinDCX, a cryptocurrency change that was hacked for $44 million in mid-July, was arrested in India in reference to a safety breach, in keeping with a number of native reviews.
Bengaluru Metropolis police detained CoinDCX software program engineer Rahul Agarwal after hackers allegedly managed to compromise his login credentials to siphon the change’s property, The Instances of India reported on Thursday.
The arrest adopted a criticism and inside investigation by CoinDCX operator Neblio Applied sciences, which decided that Agarwal’s credentials had been compromised through his work laptop computer, permitting unauthorized entry to the corporate’s servers.
Throughout questioning as his laptop computer was seized, Agarwal, 30, denied involvement within the crypto theft, however admitted to taking up part-time work for as much as 4 personal purchasers whereas nonetheless employed at CoinDCX.
“Subtle social engineering assault”
CoinDCX declined to substantiate or deny Agarwal’s arrest to Cointelegraph, referring to an X submit by CoinDCX co-founder and CEO Sumit Gupta, who instructed the general public on Thursday that the change can not have interaction with media amid an ongoing investigation.
“Based mostly on our inside preliminary findings, this seems to be a classy social engineering assault,” Gupta stated within the submit, including that staff are sometimes focused in such assaults.
“We urge the media and the general public to keep away from hypothesis or the circulation of unverified data, as it could impede the continuing investigation,” a spokesperson for CoinDCX instructed Cointelegraph.
Agarwal’s skilled background
Citing Neblio’s vice chairman for public coverage, Hardeep Singh, Bengaluru police reportedly stated that the arrested worker was a everlasting workers member and had been issued a laptop computer strictly for his function at CoinDCX, in keeping with The Instances of India.
Agarwal got here below investigation after Neblio found that an unknown particular person had hacked the system through the night time on July 19 and transferred one Tether USDt (USDT) stablecoin to a pockets. Later that morning, hackers siphoned $44 million and transferred the funds to 6 wallets.
Based on a LinkedIn profile presupposed to be Agarwal’s, the arrested CoinDCX worker had been with CoinDCX for over two years, constructing his profession within the DevOps area.
He started as a senior software program engineer in Might 2023, working remotely from Bengaluru, Karnataka. After two years on this function, he was promoted to workers engineer in April 2025, a place he at present holds and performs on-site.
Associated: CoinDCX denies it’s in talks to be acquired by Coinbase
Based on The Indian Categorical, the cops stated hackers tricked Agarwal into putting in malware on his workplace laptop computer.
The information got here days after CoinDCX CEO Gupta reported that the change was hacked on July 19.
He stated no person funds have been affected by the exploit, including that the hackers compromised one in every of CoinDCX’s inside accounts used for “liquidity provisions” with one other change by a server breach.
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