Cybercriminals behind the $150 million hack of Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen’s crypto wallets reportedly had access to private keys that were stored in the password manager LastPass.
That’s according to crypto sleuth ZachXBT, who shared a forfeiture complaint filed by the United States yesterday. The document was submitted in the Northern District Court of California and disclosed the seizure of various cryptocurrencies, worth over $23.6 million, from exchanges such as OKX, Kraken, and others.
ZachXBT claimed, “Up to this point Chris Larsen had not publicly disclosed the cause of the theft.”
In January 2024, hackers stole over 283 million XRP (worth around $150 million) from Larsen’s crypto wallets. At the time, ZachXBT tracked the stolen assets and claimed they were being laundered through exchanges, including “MEXC, Gate, Binance, Kraken, OKX, HTX, and HitBTC.”
Read more: Genesis-era XRP unlocked, sent to exchange after Trump endorsement
The forfeiture complaint details how an associate of Larsen, who managed his crypto wallets, stored his private keys in an online password manager that was breached in August 2022 and November 2022.
Indeed, a timeline of hacks affecting LastPass correlates with the complaint. The complaint claims that stolen data and passwords obtained from these breaches “were used to illegally, and without authorization, access the victims’ electronic accounts and steal information, cryptocurrency, and other data.”
Authorities seized the stolen funds under warrants issued by magistrate court judges in the Northern District of California. The complaint states that the funds should now be “forfeited to the US government for proper disposition.”
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Source: https://protos.com/ripple-ceo-chris-larsen-lost-150m-in-xrp-after-lastpass-hack/