The wallet that received the funds was reactivated five days ago
The incident unfolded ahead of Bitfinex hackers' November court date
Arkham suspects that the stolen funds are already being laundered
Photo Credit: Pexels
Crypto tracking firm Arkham Intelligence has raised an alert regarding a significant theft in the US. According to its tracking data, a US government crypto wallet containing assets seized from the 2016 Bitfinex hack has been compromised by an unknown hacker. Arkham reports that approximately $20 million (roughly Rs. 168 crore) has been stolen from this wallet.
The assets involved in this alleged hack are being transferred to a crypto wallet activated less than a week ago. Media reports note that the wallet's address begins with ‘0x348'.
According to the Arkham website tracking this US government wallet, the hacker executed four transactions to access the stolen funds. The largest transaction involved aUSDC tokens valued at $13.7 million (roughly Rs. 115 crore). The aUSDC token is an interest-bearing asset representing USDC deposited in an Aave lending market.
In three other transactions, the hacker managed to grab $5.5 million (roughly Rs. 46 crore) of USDC, $1.25 million (roughly Rs. 10 crore) worth of Tether, and $446,000 (roughly Rs. 3.27 crore) worth of Ethereum tokens.
“We believe the attacker has already begun laundering the proceeds through suspicious addresses linked to a money laundering service,” said the on-chain analytics platform posting the details about this incident on X.
$20M in USDC, USDT, aUSDC and ETH has been suspiciously moved from a USG-linked address 0xc9E6E51C7dA9FF1198fdC5b3369EfeDA9b19C34c to… pic.twitter.com/UXn1atE1Wx
Members of the crypto community, including crypto commentator and scam investigator ZachXBT on X, are tracking the flow of funds stolen from the US Department of Justice's (DoJ) wallet. The funds appear to be moving across multiple platforms, including the exchange aggregator 1inch and Binance-linked platforms.
funds are going to instantly exchanges looks nefarious
The DoJ has not yet given a public statement on the situation. Whether or not legal action has been initiated against this incident also remains unknown.
The US authorities, in recent weeks, have time and again warned the global crypto community about the rising number of hacks and scams targeting the sector. Despite being on alert, it's rather alarming that a crypto wallet controlled by the US government was breached by hackers.
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