Bitfinex Wallet Hacker Returns Majority of $20 Million to U.S. Government.
A malicious actor drained approximately $20 million from a U.S. government wallet on October 24, which contained seized funds from the 2016 Bitfinex hack. However, within less than 24 hours, the hacker returned $19.3 million to the government wallet.
According to Arkham Intelligence, several wallets controlled by the hacker began returning funds to the U.S. government wallet, starting with the address beginning with “0xc9E.” As of this writing, about 88% of the stolen funds have been returned.
On-chain data reveals that the hacker returned around 2,412 Ether (ETH), 7,200 USD Coin (USDC), and $13.2 million in Aave-staked USDC (aUSDC). Blockchain investigator ZackXBT noted that the returned amount does not include the approximately $700,000 that the hacker sent to instant exchanges.
The hacker's identity and the motive behind the attack remain unknown, but this incident highlights an increasing trend of hacks and exploits in the third quarter of 2024.
On October 16, Radiant Capital, a cross-chain lending protocol, was exploited, losing $50 million. The hacker compromised Radiant Capital contracts on the BNB Smart Chain and Arbitrum networks by obtaining the private keys needed to sign transactions from Radiant Capital’s multi-signature wallet.
About a week after the exploit, the hacker transferred $52 million in stolen funds to the Ethereum network, making recovery more challenging.
The following day, decentralized trading protocol Ambient Finance experienced a front-end attack on its website. According to the Ambient Finance team, the hacker compromised the website domain in an isolated incident that did not impact the protocol itself. The team later regained control of the domain and restored website services for users.
On October 18, restaking service Eigenlayer fell victim to a similar hack when a threat actor took control of Eigenlayer’s X social media account and spread malicious airdrop links to unsuspecting users. The fraudulent link was active for only a few minutes before being deleted, and the account is currently functioning normally.
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