A hacker dubbed the “Blockchain Bandit” has finally awoken from a six-year slumber, and has started rolling in his ill-gotten gains. According to Chainalysis, around $90 million in cryptocurrencies, stolen through a series of “programmatic thefts” conducted in 2016they started moving.
Funds include 51.000 Ether (ETH) e 470 Bitcoin (BTC)for a total value of approx 90 million dollars. Chainalysis scrive:
“We suspect the bandit is shifting its funds to take advantage of the recent price hike.”
The hacker was dubbed the “Blockchain Bandit” for being able to empty some Ethereum wallets protected by weak private keys: A process known as “Ethercombing.” Overall, the hacker managed to siphon off over 10,000 wallets from users around the world:
“$90 Million in Stolen Funds on the Go: After Six Years, ‘Blockchain Bandit’ Woke Up. In this Twitter thread, we’ll explain how he managed to amass such a fortune, and where the funds are currently held.”
1/ $90M stolen funds on the move: After 6 years of hodling, the “Blockchain Bandit” has awoken. In this we cover how the Blockchain Bandit amassed this treasure trove and where the funds are currently held.
— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) January 25, 2023
In 2019, Cointelegraph reported that Blockchain Bandit had managed to amass nearly 45,000 ETH by successfully guessing fragile private keys. It seems that the hacker discovered the vulnerability by accidentwhile doing some research on private key generation; he then created a node that automatically stole funds from vulnerable addresses.
To avoid weak private keys, Chainalysis has advised users to use only well-known and trusted wallets consider moving your funds to hardware wallets.
