In a new development, Indian authorities have arrested one of CoinDCX’s employees for his alleged connection to the recent security breach that resulted in the massive crypto theft.
Crypto Investigation Leads To Arrest
On Thursday, local reports revealed that Bengaluru City police had arrested Rahul Agarwal, a software engineer working at CoinDCX, on Saturday for his involvement in the recent crypto hack.
The arrest follows a July 22 complaint filed by CoinDCX’s parent company, Neblio Technologies, after finding that hackers compromised Agarwal’s login credentials. The software engineer had reportedly been working with the crypto exchange over the past three years and had a “well-paying role” at the company.
According to The Times of India, Hardeep Singh, Vice President for Public Policy at Neblio, explained that Agarwal became a subject of interest when the company’s internal investigation revealed that the security credentials on his work laptop had been compromised, allowing the hackers to syphon millions of dollars.
As reported by Bitcoinist, the Indian crypto exchange suffered a security breach on July 19, which resulted in the transfer of $44 million in USDT from one of the platform’s wallets to six unknown personal wallets.
CoinDCX CEO Sumit Gupta affirmed that user funds were safe, detailing that the affected wallet was one of the exchange’s internal operational accounts and was only used for liquidity supply on a partner exchange.
A ‘Sophisticated’ Attack?
In a Thursday X post, the CEO shared that “Based on our internal preliminary findings, this appears to be a sophisticated social engineering attack,” but that they “unfortunately cannot engage with the media or public on this issue,” as it is an open investigation.
Nonetheless, he reassured users that “the integrity of the process is maintained” and the crypto exchange is fully cooperating with the authorities.
According to Deccan Herald, senior police officers reportedly stated that the hackers targeted Agarwal and lured him into a fake job task. “The suspect first used his personal laptop computer to take part in the task scheme. He later switched to his office laptop computer following insistence from the perpetrators,” a senior police officer told the news media outlet.
When questioned, Agarwal allegedly confessed that he used the office laptop for his part-time job, which was against the crypto exchange’s policy, and had earned around $17,135 over the past year, but claimed not to be aware of the scam.
According to the police, the software engineer received WhatsApp calls from a German number related to files that had been sent to him for completion, which he argued “could have been a bait” used by the hacker to access the exchange’s system.
So far, authorities consider that “the probe has revealed that the employee was unaware and was a mere tool used by the perpetrators to gain access to the company servers. However, he was arrested and sent to judicial custody. He is currently in police custody for further probe.”
