The hacker who stole 342,000 ETH has begun to try to move the stolen funds to test various exchanges to see who will accept the stolen funds. The value of the stolen funds has increased significantly since the initial theft took place. At the time of the theft, the stolen ETH was valued at approximately $48.7 million USD, At the time this brief was written, the value of the stolen funds was just over $53.5 million USD. The vast majority of the transactions being made by the hacker ranged between 10 and 100,000 ETH. One of the analysts tracking the funds believes that many of these smaller transactions are to test a platform known as Huobi to try to launder the funds. The original wallet that the stolen funds were dumped into includes a number of unconfirmed transactions that appear to be there to taunt analysts. The transactions are all for 0.00001337 ETH, which is “leetspeek” for the word “elite.” These transactions will likely remain as unconfirmed since the amounts are smaller than the minimum transactions on many exchanges.
Analyst Notes
Because cryptocurrency in South Korea was targeted, it was assessed that it was possible that North Korean hackers were behind the theft. With the taunting behavior being displayed by the hacker, it is unlikely that the hacker is North Korean and more likely that this is a non-state sponsored cyber-criminal. More details on the update to this theft can be found at https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/11/28/ethereum-cryptocurrency-upbit-transactions-stash-hacker-1337-elite-leetspeek/
