DeFi
Bitcoin hacker who took $72 million returns funds in exchange for $7.2 million as ‘bounty’ – DL News
- The wBTC hacker began returning withdrawn funds to a victim in early May.
- The hacker initially got away with $72 million in wBTC.
Last week, someone took a staggering $72 million in wrapped Bitcoin tokens – Bitcoin on the Ethereum blockchain – came from one victim, but both parties agreed to a deal that will see 90% of the funds returned to the original owner.
The hacker, for his part, will keep the remaining 10%, or $7.2 million, as a “bonus”, after negotiation with the victim.
The attacker has already started returning the funds, with almost half of the initial loot returned to the victim so far, according to chain data.
The two parts negotiated the agreement via chain messaging and Telegram chats with the victim by providing their online identity on the latter platform under the name “Bui Duy Phong”.
“You win, brother. You can keep 10% and give back the 90%. We can pretend nothing happened,” the victim communicated to the hacker via chain messaging 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 using address poisoning to trick the victim.
Address poisoning is a type of attack where the hacker creates a wallet address that matches that of the victim.
In last week’s attack, the first four and six digits of both addresses were identical.
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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 theft
Cryptocurrency thefts amount to $1.7 billion last yeara drop of more than 50% compared to the figures recorded in 2022.
Phishing attacks accounted for approximately 17% of stolen funds with victims who lose 300 million dollars last year, according to on-chain fraud detector Scam Sniffer.
Most phishing attacks were due to big wallet drainers like MS Drainer, Pink, Monkey and Inferno Drainer.
Wallet drainers automate the phishing process by feeding blockchain networks with malicious transactions designed to siphon funds from victims’ wallets.
One victim even lost $24 million following a phishing attack last year.
Offering hackers a 10% bounty has become the go-to strategy for recovering stolen crypto funds.
The bounty offer is often given in exchange for not filing a report with law enforcement.
The infamous Euler Exploiter which stole $197 million in 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 based in Nigeria. He covers DeFi and technology. To share tips or story information, please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.