Stake’s Hacker Moves $328,000 Worth Of Crypto From Stolen Funds

On September 11, the hacker first transferred 520,000 MATIC tokens, worth over $266,000, which were bridged to the Avalanche blockchain. Some hours later, 300 BNB tokens valued at approximately $61,500 were sent to an externally owned address labeled “0x695…”. 

Before these recent transfers, the hacker had bridged $4.5 million to different Bitcoin blockchain addresses. This was reported by the blockchain security company Arkham on September 7. The total amount transferred, now at $4.8 million, only constitutes 1.2% of the total $41 million stolen by the hackers.

The Stake hackers exploited the platform by gaining access to the private keys of the platform’s Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum hot wallets. 

According to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Lazarus Group from North Korea – known for its involvement in various cybercrimes, including hacking and cryptocurrency-related attacks, might be behind this exploit. 

The recent hack of $41 million from Stake has contributed to the cumulative losses from cryptocurrency hacks and scams in 2023. As a result of this incident, the total losses in the cryptocurrency industry have now surpassed the $1 billion mark.

Before the Stake attack, CertiK had reported the total losses to be approximately $997 million at the end of August. But for August alone, CertiK reported that exit scams resulted in approximately $26 million in losses. Flash loan attacks accounted for $6.4 million, and exploits caused losses of $13.5 million.

The cybersecurity firm verified that these combined losses exceeded $45 million for the past month. However, with several attacks occurring in the past two weeks, the overall figure has now crossed the $1 billion threshold. 

For instance, a prominent cryptocurrency investor lost $24 million of staked Ether (ETH) in a phishing attack on September 6. Additionally, Vitalik Buterin’s X (formerly Twitter) account was compromised on September 9, and the hacker used it to trick several individuals into participating in a nonfungible token scam, resulting in a total loss of $691,000.

Considering these incidents, in addition to CertiK’s previous estimate from August, the total losses due to cryptocurrency-related incidents would now exceed at least $1.04 billion.

Other recent incidents include a withdrawal involving Pepe coin (PEPE), resulting in a loss of $13.2 million for investors. Also, a security vulnerability was exposed on the Balancer platform, resulting in damages totaling $2.1 million.