Over time, crypto hacks have grow to be extra elaborate and customary. In 2024, the neighborhood has seen tons of of thousands and thousands swept away from exploits and scams, leaving buyers empty-handed.
Generally, the exploiters return the funds and level out a challenge’s vulnerabilities, serving to stop future incidents. Nevertheless, it’s extra widespread to see hackers take the stolen funds and flee the scene.
Crypto investigator ZachXBT unveiled a sequence of exploits seemingly related to the self-called Whitehat hacker liable for the Prisma Finance exploit that took $12 million final month.
Stained Whitehat Hacker
On March 28, Prisma Finance, the Ethereum-based decentralized lending protocol, suffered a hack that stole 3,479.24 ETH. After being warned and observing the suspicious exercise, Prisma’s staff alerted the neighborhood.
On the time, the hacker contacted the Prisma staff by means of an on-chain message, declaring to be a “Whitehat” looking for customers. Throughout their dialog, the exploiter claimed they needed to “increase higher consciousness on critical contract audits” and using DeFi.
The next day, the lending protocol launched an in depth autopsy of the incident. This put up seemingly ruffled the hacker’s feathers, as they demanded that the staff change all of the “accusatory phrases” like ‘exploit’ and ‘hacker.’
The messages raised alarms about whether or not the funds could be returned. Seemingly unhappy with the Prisma staff’s compliance to edit the autopsy put up, the exploiter requested for a bounty of $3.8 million, value 34% of the entire funds.
1/ An investigation into the alleged $11.1M @PrismaFi exploiter 0x77 (Trung) and the a number of different exploits they’re related to. pic.twitter.com/QU1Oy7Txbb
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) April 16, 2024
The quantity requested was triple the business normal of 10%. In response to the crypto detective, the exploiter was “basically extorting the staff” because the treasury didn’t have sufficient funds to reimburse the victims.
Regardless of the Whitehat claims and obvious discomfort with phrases that acknowledged in any other case, the hacker contradicted himself by sending the funds to Twister Money. Additional investigation by the crypto detective revealed that this Whitehat has a number of stains.
Prisma’s Exploiter Related To A number of Crypto Hacks
ZachXBT’s deep dive into the timing of associated transactions resulted within the discovery of “exercise related to them on Tron.” One tackle, TGviNZ, was linked to quite a few exploits.
Per the investigation, TGviNZ was funded by the Arcade_xyz exploit from March 2023. Throughout this incident, the exploiter requested extra funds from the challenge by way of Telegram.
Equally, the tackle was related to the Pine Protocol exploit from February 2024. This time, the hacker requested for 50% of the funds and allegedly made “extra unreasonable requests over e-mail.”
Chain of adresses connecting the Modulus Protocol deployer and the Prisma exploiter. Supply: ZachXBT on X
The crypto sleuth then found that TGviNZ is linked to the deployer of Modulus protocol, a “decentralized, non-custodian platform.” Additional investigation revealed that an X consumer, “0x77,” was among the many few followers of the protocol.
This proved essential in piecing collectively the puzzle, because the Arcade exploiter used the alias “0x77” on Telegram. A deeper look into the telephone quantity, e-mail addresses used, and different particulars identified the identical suspect behind these exploits.
The main points of the suspected exploiter at the moment are within the palms of the Prisma staff, which is investigating whether or not to pursue authorized motion in opposition to the person in Vietnam and Australia.
Crypto Whole Market Cap sitting at $2.207 trillion within the weekly chart. Supply: TOTAL on TradingView
Featured Picture from Unsplash.com, Chart from TradingView.com