Hackers apparently steal $20m from US government wallets

As a seasoned researcher with years of experience in the complex world of blockchain and crypto, I find this development both intriguing and concerning. The allegations of a potential breach in U.S. government crypto wallets, leading to the loss of millions in cryptocurrencies, is a story that has caught my attention.


It’s been suggested that some digital wallets used by the U.S. government for cryptocurrencies might have been hacked, since experts have pointed out unusual transactions on the blockchain.

As reported by Arkham, there’s a possibility that unidentified hackers may have made off with around $20 million worth of cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT), and Circle USD Coin (USDC) that were being held in U.S. government-managed accounts.

As an analyst, I’ve uncovered a potentially intriguing development. The insights shared by ZachXBT on Telegram hint at this tale possibly intertwining with funds confiscated from the perpetrators of the Bitfinex hack. According to Arkham’s findings, address 0xc9E appears to have received seized assets from at least one wallet detailed in the court case documents related to Bitfinex.

20 million units of USDC, USDT, aUSDC, and ETH have been transferred from an account associated with the U.S. Government (0xc9E6E51C7dA9FF1198fdC5b3369EfeDA9b19C34c) to another account in a way that raises suspicions, moving towards…

— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) October 24, 2024

In 2016, Bitfinex suffered a hack at the hands of Ilya Lichtenstein and his musical collaborator Heather Morgan (known as Razzlekhan). This pair managed to pilfer approximately $8 billion worth of Bitcoin from the cryptocurrency exchange. Fast-forward nearly ten years, federal authorities have proposed that Lichtenstein receive a five-year sentence.

According to a recent post by Arkham on October 24th, it appears that the hackers began to sell and clean stolen funds after infiltrating the digital wallets of the U.S. government, as suggested by the transactions.

The funds were moved to wallet 0x348 which has begun selling the funds to ETH. We believe the attacker has already begun laundering the proceeds through suspicious addresses linked to a money laundering service.

Arkham

Prior to the blockchain analytics company marking U.S. government transactions as suspicious, Arkham observed that federal wallets had withdrawn approximately $6.5 million in cryptocurrency from decentralized finance lender Aave. Furthermore, Etherscan data revealed that one U.S. government-linked address paid up to $1,000 in Ethereum transaction fees to transfer roughly $100,000 worth of digital currencies.

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2024-10-25 02:38