By George Ward
A week ago, an unknown hacker infiltrated the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and made off with over $660 million worth of digital assets. Now, the hacker has moved some of those stolen funds into Ethereum, becoming the 35th largest owner of ETH in the process.
The hacker then moved the stolen ETH into several Ethereum wallets. One of those wallets, which contained over 5,000 ETH, was recently identified as belonging to the FTX exchange by multi-chain data.
The remaining ETH from the theft has been moved into a wallet containing over 35,000 ETH, worth approximately $122 million. It is unclear what the hacker plans to do with the stolen ETH. One of the options available is to attempt to sell it on the open market.
Series Of Exploits
The recent exploits on FTX and FTX.US exchanges have left many users wondering whether it was an inside job. So the security operations director at Certik, an on-chain securities firm, Hugh Brooks, suggested using an on-chain technique to authenticate these claims.
He explained that access to these wallets moving the digital assets could not be possible without an in-house compromise. The first exploit occurred on FTX when a user’s account was compromised, and over $150,000 worth of funds were stolen.
The second exploit occurred on FTX.US when a user’s account was compromised, and over $5,000 worth of funds were stolen. However, the fact that both exchanges were exploited within such a short timeframe and the exploits were remarkably similar led many to believe that it was an inside job.
The Certik analyst explained that on-chain evidence suggests that the funds were transferred by someone with access to the exchange’s wallets. This event, however, has not affected the price of Ether.
There will be many more revelations regarding the FTX collapse in the coming weeks. Also, it will be a long end to the year for the FTX founder as he faces investigations from different regulators.