Key takeaways
- More than $20 million worth of Ethereum and stablecoins were stolen from a US government-controlled wallet.
- The theft is related to the wallet involved in the 2016 Bitfinex hack.
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The US government may have suffered a $20 million exploit targeting its crypto wallet on October 24, according to reports from Arkham and blockchain sleuth ZachXBT.
𝗨𝗣𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗘: 𝗨𝗦 𝗚𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 $ 𝟮𝟬𝗠.
$20 million in USDC, USDT, aUSDC, and ETH have been suspiciously moved from an address linked to USG 0xc9E6E51C7dA9FF1198fdC5b3369EfeDA9b19C34c to… pic.twitter.com/UXn1atE1Wx
– Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) October 24, 2024
The incident was first detected today after a US government-linked address, which had been inactive for eight months, made some suspicious transfers.
According to data tracked by Arkham, initially, $1.25 million in USDT and $5.5 million in USDC were moved from the DeFi platform Aave. Approximately $13.7 million in USDC and $446,000 in Ethereum were subsequently transferred to a newly created wallet. These funds had previously been seized by US authorities during the Bitfinex hack investigation.
Other moves included around $320,000 in Ethereum sent to various exchanges and $80,000 distributed to several smaller wallets. Investigations are underway to trace the laundered funds and assess the full extent of the breach. The US government has not yet released an official statement regarding this incident.
Arkham noted that the attacker had begun selling these assets for ETH and may have been laundering the profits through several suspicious addresses. At the time of writing, US authorities still hold more than $14 billion in total.
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