Bitcoin
Bitcoin Hacker Who Took $72 Million Returns Funds in Exchange for $7.2 Million ‘Reward’ – DL News
- The wBTC hacker began returning funds taken from a victim in early May.
- The hacker initially escaped with $72 million in wBTC.
Last week, someone he picked up a staggering $72 million in wrapped Bitcoin tokens – Bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain – from one victim, but both parties have agreed to a settlement that will see 90% of the funds returned to the original owner.
The hacker, in turn, will keep the remaining 10% – which is equivalent to US$7.2 million – as a “reward”, after negotiation with the victim.
The attacker has already started returning funds, with nearly half of the original withdrawal transferred back to the victim so far, according to on-chain data.
Both parts negotiated the agreement through on-chain messaging and Telegram chats with the victim by providing his online identity on the latter platform as “Bui Duy Phong”.
“You won, brother. You can keep 10% and return the 90%. We can act as if nothing had happened,” the victim communicated to the hacker via onchain messages on May 4. “We both know that $7 million is enough to live very comfortably, but $70 million will keep you up at night.”
The hacker drained Phong’s assets last week using a phishing attack that used address poisoning to trick the victim.
Address poisoning is a type of attack where the hacker creates a wallet address that matches the victim’s.
In last week’s attack, the first four and six digits of both addresses were the same.
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The hacker then spammed the victim with transactions sent using the poisoned address to trick them into sending funds to the wrong destination wallet.
$1.7 billion in cryptocurrency thefts
Crypto Thefts Totaled US$1.7 billion last yeara drop of more than 50% compared to the values recorded in 2022.
Phishing attacks accounted for around 17% of stolen funds with the victims losing US$300 million last year, according to onchain fraud detector Scam Sniffer.
Most phishing attacks occurred due to large wallet drainers such as MS Drainer, Pink, Monkey and Inferno Drainer.
Wallet drainers automate the phishing process by filling blockchain networks with malware transactions designed to siphon funds from victims’ wallets.
One victim even lost $24 million in a phishing attack last year.
Offering hackers a 10% reward has become the ideal strategy to recover stolen crypto funds.
The offer of a reward is usually given in exchange for not filing a complaint with authorities.
The infamous Euler explorer which stole $197 million worth of crypto from the DeFi protocol last year initially did not respond to a similar offer but later returned the funds.
Osato Avan-Nomayo is our DeFi correspondent in Nigeria. He covers DeFi and technology. To share tips or story information, contact him via email osato@dlnews.com.