Investigators Need to get Alert After FTX Hacker’s This Move

The infamous hack on beleaguered crypto exchange FTX has got an update recently. The crypto wallet account said to belong to the hacker is reported to have some movements. Given the gap between the time of hack and movement of stolen funds inferred as an action to get away from the authorities’ watch.

Ethereum’s block explorer and analytics platform, Etherscan data shows that the hacker account has moved about 180K ETH to 12 different accounts. These newly created accounts received equal amounts of Ethereum (ETH)—15K ETH each.

In terms of USD, the total amount of Ethereum transferred by the hacker accounts for 196.2 million USD. At the press time, Etheruem is trading at around 1,090 USD.

The Bahamian crypto exchange FTX went on to file for bankruptcy under the Chapter 11 Bankruptcy code. Soon after the filing, the crypto exchange was encountered with an attack that reportedly stole around 447 million USD from the platform.

Analysts indicated the action as ‘peel chaining’, an attempt to further divide the amount in so small chunks that it will be difficult for the investigating authorities to track the transaction. Some also raised the concern of the hacker potentially using a mixer to siphon the stolen assets.

On Sunday, 20th November 2022, blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis put up a warning that the hacker could go with using a crypto mixer to send his funds. The crypto mixers are touted as crucial for privacy within the crypto but critics cited the same as one of the most favorable tools for illicit actors to conceal where the crypto assets actually came from.

Although the newly appointed chief executive officer, John Ray stated the amount hacked from FTX was around 372 million USD. Ray is also said to play as the chief restructuring officer for the bankrupt crypto firm.

Yet there remains several reports claiming the stolen amount to be more than 600 million USD. Analysts cited the reason to state the lesser amount could be due to the security reasons.

FTX bankruptcy filing has already made many investors and users lose their funds. After getting the hacker’s wallet account address, many such users went on to contact the hacker and sent coded messages. They asked the hacker for their share from the stolen assets.

The users were seen to try different absurd ways to contact the FTX hacker. One user with a registered Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain has made 21 transactions sending 0.000001 ETH to the hacker. Another made 12 transactions, each of 0.0001 ETH to the wallet belonging to the hacker. All these efforts just to get notice of the hacker.