Four months after the Rs 2000 crore WazirX hack, Delhi Police has filed a charge sheet in the Delhi High Court after a preliminary investigation that resulted in the arrest of an accused man from West Bengal.
Delhi Police’s Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) cell, which is investigating the case, has claimed that Liminal Custody, the erstwhile security partner of WazirX, is yet to be questioned in the case. Police also claimed that they would file a supplementary chargesheet in the case, after questioning Liminal Custody.
After the July 18 hack of a multi-sig cold wallet of WazirX, the exchange management and their security partner Liminal Custody, have had a bitter fallout. WazirX had hired the services of Liminal to store a few of their cold wallets and the hack occurred on one of them, which resulted in the loss of 45% of user funds.
Taking cognizance of a petition filed by a WazirX user, the Delhi High Court on October 18 instructed Delhi Police to file a status report of the hack’s investigation within one month. On Saturday, the IFSO cell submitted its chargesheet at the Patiala House Delhi Court.
According to the charge sheet filed in the Patiala House Court, the accused person, SK Masud Alam , allegedly created a fake account under the name Souvik Mondal. This account was sold to M Hasan, who used it to execute the breach. Police say the hackers targeted WazirX’s hot wallet and attempted to infiltrate its cold wallet— considered the last line of defense due to its offline storage.
Police have also claimed in their chargesheet that Liminal Custody replied to their questionnaire through a 119 pages long answer, that was embedded in the chargesheet. However, none of the devices of WazirX and Liminal Custody have been analyzed by forensics yet.
Interestingly, WazirX has been praised for its cooperation as according to Delhi Police, it provided transaction logs, KYC data, and access to systems, helping the police rule out unauthorized access to its servers. The Police have further claimed that a supplementary chargesheet will be filed after questioning Liminal Custody and forensic analysis of all devices involved in operations.
