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For anyone who tries to steal them, the cryptocurrencies they’ve always offered a strange mix of temptations and challenges. As digital currency, held in multibillion-dollar amounts on hackable, internet-connected networks, these assets make for a lucrative target. But once stolen, the blockchains on which almost all cryptocurrencies are based make it possible to trace any movement and, very often, to identify the thieves. For this reason after November 13th ftxthe exchange that declared bankruptcy in recent days, suffered the theft of nearly half a billion dollars of fundsCryptocurrency trackers around the world are closely watching the trail of the loot, looking for any clues that might reveal whether the thief is a company insider or simply an opportunistic cybercriminal.
The shot
Just hours after FTX – until then one of the world’s leading exchanges – filed for bankruptcy following a ten-figure crash, the company’s remaining funds were over $663 million in cryptocurrencies withdrawn, much of which appears to have been stolen. “Ftx has been hacked – wrote an administrator in the Telegram channel of the exchange -. Ftx apps are malware. Erase them”. How exactly Ftx could have been hacked – and whether its apps were indeed compromised – it’s not clear yet, and the company has not yet officially declared that it had suffered a theft. In a tweetsHowever, the company’s legal director wrote that “si Unauthorized access to some resources has occurred” (Ftx did not respond to a request for comment Wired US).
Shortly thereafter, Elliptic, which deals with cryptocurrency tracking and blockchain analysis, he revealed that the $663 million leak appears to be a combination of an FTX transfer of funds to the company’s storage wallets and a mysterious theft. According to Elliptic it looks like they were stolen 477 million dollarsalthough estimates by another cryptocurrency tracking company, Trm Labs, they speak of 338 million. Twenty-four hours after the theft, most of that money had moved to a few cryptocurrency addresses, which is now closely monitored by the entire cryptocurrency tracking industry, the large community of amateur crypto-investigators and, no doubt , including by law enforcement agencies around the world.
This traceability, which concerns both Ftx funds and other stolen cryptocurrency deposits, represents a major obstacle for any thief who wants to convert stolen funds into traditional currency. And in this case – with regulators and an army of aggrieved creditors looking for clues that could point FTX staff or owners responsible – it could help confirm that the theft was committed by people inside the company or prove that cybercriminals from outside took advantage of the chaos of Ftx to carry out the attack.
The uphill road for cybercriminals
“We are definitely watching the movements of these funds – declares Chris Janczewski, head of investigations of Trm Labs and former special agent of the criminal investigation division of the IRS, the government agency that deals with tax collection in the United States -. This would-be thief is in possession of hundreds of millions of dollars. But it’s like he walked into a bank, he took all the cash he could carry with him but then the ink activated [dei sistemi anti-rapina, ndr]. Now they have a lot of money, which though everyone knows they are connected to a bank robbery. What can they do about it?“.
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