$3.5B Bitcoin heist from 2020 retroactively uncovered — Arkham Intel
Main Idea
A $3.5 billion Bitcoin heist from Chinese mining pool LuBian in 2020, the largest cryptocurrency hack to date, was retroactively uncovered by Arkham Intel, revealing vulnerabilities in the pool's private key generation.
Key Points
1. LuBian, the sixth-largest BTC mining pool at the time, was hacked on December 28, 2020, losing 127,426 Bitcoin (worth $3.5 billion then, now ~$14.5 billion).
2. The hack went unreported for years, with 90% of the pool's BTC stolen and only 11,886 BTC recovered.
3. LuBian embedded OP_RETURN messages in 1,516 transactions to hacker wallets, costing ~1.4 BTC, possibly to track or communicate with the hacker.
4. Arkham suggested the pool's private key generation algorithm was vulnerable to brute-force attacks, which hackers likely exploited.
5. The LuBian hack surpasses other major crypto heists, such as the $1.5 billion ByBit hack in February, attributed to a compromised SafeWallet developer's AWS tokens.
Description
The $3.5 billion heist is the single largest cryptocurrency hack and went unreported by both parties for years, according to Arkham.
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