lost 10 Bitcoin and $1.5 million in NFT from phishing 2022

A user reports on X having lost 10 Bitcoin (BTC) and 1.5 million dollars in NFT, but the crypto community identifies their address as a victim of a phishing attack from 2022. 

Ledger and phishing 2022: reported losses of 10 BTC and 1.5 million dollars in NFT

The user Anchor Drops reported on X that they lost as much as 10 Bitcoin (BTC) and 1.5 million dollars in NFTs from their own Ledger Nano S. 

“Hey @ledger last night I lost 10 BTC and ~1.5m of NFT stored on my ledger Nano S. The ledger was purchased directly from you. The seed phrase was stored in a safe place and has never been entered online. I have never signed any malicious transaction. Everything is in my physical possession. I haven’t touched this ledger for 2 months. Can you explain what happened?”

In practice, on December 13, the user noticed their significant losses and publicly reported the incident in search of answers. 

The user wanted to describe their behavior in a precise manner, considering they have kept their seed phrase safe, and have not signed any harmful transaction. 

Yet, according to the responses from the crypto community, its address seems to have been a victim of a phishing attack in February 2022. 

Ledger: the crypto community warns the user who was robbed that they are a victim of the 2022 phishing attack

According to the response from KDean of the crypto community, it seems the robbed user was a victim of a phishing attack 2022. 

“I’m sorry to hear that. It seems that the phish happened a few years ago and has just resurfaced.”

In practice, KDean linked the loss to a phishing transaction involving the compromised Ethereum address, shared by Anchor Drops. Marked as “Fake_Phishing5443”, the alleged phishing transaction occurred on February 22, 2022.

From what has emerged, therefore, the hacker allegedly drained the victim’s crypto wallet almost three years after their phishing attack. 

Not only that, experts have stated that since the losses affect multiple blockchains, it is likely that the phishing attempt captured the user’s seed phrase, gaining access to the crypto wallet in all supported chains, including Bitcoin. 

At the time of writing, BTC is worth $105,000, which means that the user Anchor Drops has been robbed of the equivalent of $1,050,000, in addition to $1.5 million in NFTs. 

The attack of January 2024 and the reimbursement

At the beginning of this year, Ledger had been a victim of another hacker attack for a total value of about $600,000. Ledger had stated that it would provide reimbursement of the total amount for its robbed users, making changes to the security of its devices.

In January 2024, the Ledger Connect Kit software was under phishing attack, but here the hacker was identified as a former employee of the French crypto company. 

Specifically, the hacker allegedly published malicious code that redirected users’ funds to their own wallet during transactions with decentralized applications, or dApps, that used the software in question. 

Here, Ledger was able to intervene and reimburse all its clients who were victims of the hacker attack.