$19 Million Recovered in Attack on US Government Wallet

On Thursday, a hacker withdrew nearly $20 million from a US government wallet. However, most of these funds were recovered on Friday following the incident. On Twitter, this incident was highlighted as one of the biggest thefts of the year.

Suspicious Transfers and Refunds

Famous blockchain detective ZachXBT discovered this suspicious activity. He noted that the wallet interacted with various DeFi protocols and exchanges through a series of “malicious” transfers.

ZachXBT: “Hacker stole approximately $20 million in crypto assets and returned approximately $19 million today.” he said.

According to ZachXBT, the hacker reportedly transferred 2,408 ETH and 13.19 million aUSDC to the US government wallet. However, exchanges such as Switchain and HitBTC have not yet returned the transferred funds.

Arkham Intelligence “reported on Friday that $19.3 million was returned to the government purse.” He gave information as follows.

According to Arkham’s analysis, the government purse is still about $1.2 million short of the original $20 million loss. These missing funds are assets seized by the US DoJ linked to the 2016 Bitfinex hack.

Arkham Intelligence’s Concerns

Arkham Intelligence has raised concerns over previous activity on US government crypto wallets. It was noteworthy that the seized assets were transferred to various addresses such as Aave, Curve Finance and Yearn Finance.

Finally, analyst Ergo BTC noted that there are inconsistencies and potential vulnerabilities in the Bitfinex seizure documents. This situation calls into question the reliability of the management of the seized assets.

This incident reveals that the government needs to review its measures on digital asset security. It becomes important to adopt more robust security protocols to protect crypto assets.