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A cryptocurrency investor lost more than $282 million in Bitcoin and Litecoin after falling for a social engineering scam involving a hardware wallet.
On January 16, chain researcher ZachXBT discovered the massive theft, which took the victim’s account of 2.05 million Litecoin (LTC) and 1,459 Bitcoin (BTC).
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Monero surged 36% after hackers exchanged stolen coins for privacy coin
I confirmed Cybersecurity company ZeroShadow said the attacker carried out the theft by impersonating Trezor customer support. Trezor is a large hardware wallet provider and has over 2 million users.
The scammers successfully manipulated the victim into revealing their recovery phrase, handing over full control of the assets.
After the breach, the perpetrator immediately began to launder the stolen money.
ZachXBT said the attacker used several spot trading platforms, especially ThorChain, to link the stolen Bitcoin to Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin.
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Meanwhile, the attacker’s reliance on ThorChain has drawn strong criticism towards the decentralized infrastructure provider.
ZachXBT said that this is not the first time that The platform is being exploited by bad actors For such purposes. This suggests that it remains a favorite destination for criminals looking to move stolen wealth.
At the same time, The hacker converted a significant portion of the spoils into Monero (XMR), It is a privacy-focused token designed to hide transaction details.
“ZeroShadow tracked the outflows and froze more than $1 million before it could be converted to XMR. The activity that may occur could increase the price of XMR.” “, he said Zero Shadow.
It is worth noting that this aggressive buying wave has brought At a significant increase in the market price of Monero.
BeinCrypto data shows that the token has increased by more than 36% in the seven-day period, reaching a peak of almost $800. Since then, the asset has corrected to about $621 at press time.
This incident highlights a growing security crisis in the digital asset sector. Attackers change their tactics, They prioritize social engineering and brand imitation scams At the expense of exploiting the technical code to deceive the victims.
Blockchain analysis company Chainalysis measured the trend It reported a 1,400% year-over-year increase in impersonation scams. The company also reported that the average financial loss per incident increased by more than 600%.
