Having successfully guessed weakly protected private keys in the Ethereum blockchain, an unknown attacker kidnapped about 45,000 ETH. Wired wrote about this citing a study conducted by the cybersecurity company Independent Security Evaluators (ISE).
As stated by Adrian Bednarek, senior security analyst at ISE, the hacker, who was nicknamed Blockchain Bandit, was discovered by accident.
Assuming that the combination of private key symbols should be statistically improbable, Bednarek, using his own method, was able to unlock 732 keys. Having access to the wallets, he also had the opportunity to make transactions without hindrance.
The ISE report notes that instead of the method of random selection of characters, analysts used a combination of finding a faulty code and random number generators.
In the process, it was noticed that large amounts of money were made from some of the wallets associated with the disclosed private keys. All of them went to the same address, and as Bernadek concluded, a certain hacker used the same combined methods.
According to rough estimates, the hacker’s catch is about 45,000 ETH, or about $ 7.8 million at the current rate. Despite the fact that the identity of the attacker has not yet been established, Bednarek suggests that state-sponsored figures from North Korea may be hiding behind the thefts.
According to the latest report of the US Security Council, North Korea, which is under tough international sanctions, has already accumulated about $ 670 million in cryptocurrencies and fiat due to hacker attacks alone.
Recall that in April, the Center for International Security and Defense Policy of the American Corporation RAND published a report, according to which terrorists increasingly refuse to cryptocurrency, fearing hacker hacking and de-anonymization.
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