Despite the ongoing bear market, the crypto industry- tipped to be worth over $1 trillion- is still a highly attractive cash cow for many hackers and scam artists.
With the $615 million-valued breach of Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network being the gold standard for bad actors, crypto scams continue to prevail on a daily basis.
The latest unsavoury instalment of this came yesterday, by way of Australian crypto casino Stake which saw over $41 million drained across its Ethereum (ETH), Binance Smart Chain (BNB), and Polygon (MATIC) wallets.
Kick starting at around at 12:50pm UTC, on-chain analytics platform Cyvers reported that the $41 million stolen sum was taken via multiple transfers, with the funds being comprised of $15.7 million worth of ETH, $17.8 million worth of BNB, and $7.8 million worth of MATIC.
????ALERT????Our AI-powered system has detected multiple suspicious transactions with @Stake.https://t.co/0ZoMITOyF5 address received about $16M in $ETH $USDC $USDT and $DAI
— ???? Cyvers Alerts ???? (@CyversAlerts) September 4, 2023
All the stable coins are converted to $ETH and distributed to different EOAs.
FYI: @tayvano_ @zachxbt pic.twitter.com/CSGwRHEiVm
However the site’s Bitcoin, Litecoin, and XRP wallets were not impacted in the exploit, and as Etherscan data shows, Strike’s crypto wallets still hold $340,000 worth of ETH and $2.1 million worth of various altcoins.
Once in control of the stolen assets, the culprits converted the MATIC and BNB into ETH, before transferring the funds to several externally owned wallets. Given the anonymity involved in online crypto identities- i.e. something that we ironically rant and rave about when discussing DeFi- the likelihood of finding the culprits is probably low.
Furthermore, given that Stake raked-in a whopping $2.6 billion in revenue last year (per the Financial Times), its $41 million losses may not be as substantial as you may’ve first thought. In fact, with such revenue at its backing, Stake reopened its withdrawals and resumed services just 5 hours after the exploit took place.
Stake is yet to reveal the cause of the exploit, however the company has revealed that it first appeared as ‘several unauthorised transactions on its ETH/BSC hot wallets’- with murmurings of a ‘private key leak’ circulating.
That being said, Stake is insistent that users’ crypto funds remain safe and secure.
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This article is intended for educational purposes and is not financial advice.
