FTX hacker could be using SBF trial as a smokescreen: CertiK

The hacker liable for stealing implicit $400 cardinal from FTX and FTX US successful November could beryllium utilizing the hype astir Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud proceedings to further obfuscate the funds, says CertiK’s manager of information operations Hugh Brooks.

Only days earlier the commencement of Bankman-Fried's transgression trial, the FTX hacker, known arsenic “FTX Drainer," began moving millions successful Ether it had gained from the November attack.

The movements person continued passim the trial. In the past 3 days, the hacker transferred astir 15,000 ETH (worth astir $24 million) to 3 caller wallet addresses.

“With the onset of the FTX proceedings and the important nationalist attraction and media sum it is receiving, the idiosyncratic accountable for draining the funds mightiness beryllium feeling an accrued urgency to conceal the assets,” said Brooks.

“It's besides plausible that the FTX drainer harbored an presumption that the proceedings would monopolize truthful overmuch attraction from the Web3 manufacture that determination would beryllium insufficient bandwidth to hint each stolen funds portion besides covering the proceedings concurrently.”

FTX, which had erstwhile been valued astatine $32 billion, declared bankruptcy connected Nov. 11. That aforesaid day, employees astatine FTX began noticing monolithic withdrawals of funds from the exchange’s wallets.

An Oct. 9 report from Wired has provided caller penetration into however events transpired during the nighttime of the attack.

After FTX employees realized that the attacker had implicit entree to a bid of wallets, the squad declared that "the fox [was] successful the hen house” and scrambled to support the remaining funds retired of the hacker’s hands.

The squad reportedly made the determination to transportation a staggering magnitude of the remaining funds — betwixt $400 and $500 cardinal — to a privately owned Ledger acold wallet, portion waiting to perceive backmost from BitGo, the institution tasked with taking custody of the exchange’s assets post-bankruptcy.

The determination apt prevented the attacker from gaining a afloat $1 cardinal successful the raid.

Related: FTX hacker’s wallet stirs arsenic Ethereum ETFs hole for US debut

Meanwhile, Brooks explained that the hacker appears to person changed its method for obscuring funds.

On Nov. 21, the FTX hacker was observed attempting to launder funds by utilizing a “peel chain” method, which involves sending decreasing amounts of funds to caller wallets and “peeling” disconnected smaller amounts to caller wallets.

However, the hacker has precocious been utilizing a much blase method to obscure the transportation of the illicit assets, said Brooks.

The caller laundering method being employed by the FTX hacker arsenic recorded connected Oct. 2. Source: CertiK

The funds stored successful the archetypal Bitcoin wallet are distributed done aggregate wallets, transferring smaller divisions of funds to a bid of further wallets, a maneuver that “considerably prolongs” the tracing process.

Brooks said they person yet to place immoderate individuals oregon groups that could beryllium down the FTX hack, and that investigations are continuing.

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