The incident showed weaknesses in the protection of US assets.
This week, there was a mysterious attack on a wallet controlled by the US government, as a result of which more than $20 million was stolen, but by the morning of the next day, the bulk of the funds were returned. However, about $700,000 is still missing — these funds were sent to HitBTC, Switchain, and N Exchange exchanges.
The incident attracted the attention of the analytical firm Arkham Intelligence, which recorded the movement of funds. A well-known blockchain specialist ZackXBT noted that the transactions looked suspicious. According to experts, part of the funds was directed to platforms that use Binance for liquidity, although it was initially assumed that the funds ended up on Binance itself.
The funds in the spotlight belong to a wallet confiscated by the US Department of Justice in 2022 in connection with the investigation of the hacker attack on Bitfinex in 2016. Then about 120,000 BTC were withdrawn from the exchange, which at the time of the theft was $72 million.
An hour after the return of funds to the government wallet, a new transfer of assets began. First, a test transaction was carried out for a small amount of ETH, followed by transfers of $6.1 million and $11.6 million in aUSDC, a stablecoin on the Aave platform. Various cryptocurrencies have also been spotted in the wallet, including USDC, TRUMP, MTV, USDT, and WATER.
This incident drew attention to the security issues of even government cryptocurrency assets and showed that even under the control of government agencies, large sums can be vulnerable to attacks.
Source
This week, there was a mysterious attack on a wallet controlled by the US government, as a result of which more than $20 million was stolen, but by the morning of the next day, the bulk of the funds were returned. However, about $700,000 is still missing — these funds were sent to HitBTC, Switchain, and N Exchange exchanges.
The incident attracted the attention of the analytical firm Arkham Intelligence, which recorded the movement of funds. A well-known blockchain specialist ZackXBT noted that the transactions looked suspicious. According to experts, part of the funds was directed to platforms that use Binance for liquidity, although it was initially assumed that the funds ended up on Binance itself.
The funds in the spotlight belong to a wallet confiscated by the US Department of Justice in 2022 in connection with the investigation of the hacker attack on Bitfinex in 2016. Then about 120,000 BTC were withdrawn from the exchange, which at the time of the theft was $72 million.
An hour after the return of funds to the government wallet, a new transfer of assets began. First, a test transaction was carried out for a small amount of ETH, followed by transfers of $6.1 million and $11.6 million in aUSDC, a stablecoin on the Aave platform. Various cryptocurrencies have also been spotted in the wallet, including USDC, TRUMP, MTV, USDT, and WATER.
This incident drew attention to the security issues of even government cryptocurrency assets and showed that even under the control of government agencies, large sums can be vulnerable to attacks.
Source
