Will hackers get away with the ETH stolen from Crypto.com?
Direct from the desk of Dane Williams.
No, the hackers will likely not get away with the $15 million worth of ETH stolen from Crypto.com.
Due to their impatience and reliance on centralised tech, it looks like the hackers fucked up.
Let’s take a look at the story so far and have a discussion on what could and will happen in the future.
Crypto.com exchange hacked
I’m sure you’ve seen in the news recently that the Crypto.com exchange was recently the victim of a hack.
The retweets and gloating on Twitter from no-coiners has been really weird to watch, but highlights the mainstream reach of the story.
Crypto.com paused their withdrawals (yeah, that’s never going to go down well…) and scurried to communicate to their clients that they needed to update their 2FA:
Yikes.
But it was the following Tweet from security research company PeckShield Inc that sparked what I wanted to talk about in today’s blog:
So it looks like Crypto.com was actually taken for 4600 ETH in the hack.
That’s $15 million worth of Ethereum at the current market price.
Holy shit.
Now Crypto.com is obviously a massive, tightly regulated, centralised exchange that is not going to pass this loss onto their customers.
Sorry gloating no-coiners, you obviously still have a bit to learn about how things work…
Centralised tech and impatience
But what got me, was the fact that the hackers were dumb enough to send that $15 million worth of stolen ETH to the mixer service called Tornado Cash.
While you might think that all mixers will hide the money trail and allow you to cruise away with your millions of dollars, Tornado Cash is not one of them.
You see, the updated version of Tornado Cash actually includes a cryptographic note in the transaction history.
This note can then be used to determine where the funds came from and offer law enforcement the paper trail required to nab you.
How good.
You seriously can’t make this stuff up.
So these guys had the intelligence to hack one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world and escape with $15 million worth of ETH.
But weren’t smart or patient enough to effectively clean their crypto using a decentralised and untraceable method.
Dead set.
Wait until Monero hits THORChain
With that being said however, what were their other options?
Monero (XMR) certainly has the capabilities they were after, but finding somewhere to swap $15 million of ETH without anyone noticing, certainly isn’t an easy task.
So for a bounty that size, probably not.
But they did have the option of sitting on the ETH.
Sitting on the ETH and waiting until THORChain adds Monero.
Deep liquidity pools offering anyone the ability to swap native ETH for native XMR without permission?
It’s coming and once it does…
Game over.
Pro privacy and freedom of speech
Now, in saying all of this, I’d like to make it clear that I’m not actually pro-criminal.
What I am however, is a realist.
This is the exact same concept where we talk about having freedom of speech on Hive.
Do I want to see thieves gloating or filth sharing despicable pieces of content all over the place?
Fuck, of course not.
But I’m also not dumb enough to stick my head in the sand in today’s world and say it doesn’t happen and that the tech can be stopped by your government flicking a switch.
The cat is out of the bag and there are now systems in place that offer legitimate platforms for the private movement of funds and freedom of speech.
Each with extremely real, life changing use-cases for literally millions of people around the world.
This is why I’m here on Hive, writing about these sort of incidents and promoting the concept of both freedom and decentralisation.
Join the movement by clicking the get started button at the top right hand corner of this page and using your Twitter account to get your own Web3 Hive account.
Best of probabilities to you.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
My father is watching the hackers, they will pay for their sins with their souls and spend an eternity burning in hell and they only have 3G internet speeds down there. They never thought What would Jesus do? I mean the answer is my father's book and everything.
I've been chilling with 2Pac and Biggie in Ghetto heaven and im feeling Gansta the past few weeks. I was for going to go down to their crib and bust some balls but my father said no.
and yeah, Thorchain will do good things and provide liquidity to the masses in future times. The rewards for those that HODL and keep the faith will be bountiful.
Jesus Christ!
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Yes 😁
How can i help you my brother
One of the main reasons to be Long term bullish on THORChain
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THORChain is probably the most exciting project in all of crypto right now.
It's not only going to change the crypto industry, but the entire financial system.
Wild.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Well their mistake is definitely something we can praise. Any hacker who steals money should be ready to face the consequences.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Well said :)
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It is actually hilarious that someone who is capable of performing such a hack ends up making this sort of a mistake.. Sometimes it's easy to tunnel-vision I guess.
!1UP
Sometimes the obvious gets overlooked.
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Book smarts do not always equal street smarts ;)
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In the world there are many ways to do impressive things like cryptocurrencies, the fact that criminals use them to do crimes is another thing, but a decentralized world is very good.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Criminals use USD to commit a lot of crimes also.
Plus we need to keep in mind that hacking has been going on for decades. The only difference is the data stolen now has monetary value inherently. In the past, what was stolen, like new fighter jet plans from the DOD, had to be sold to someone else.
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For me, the good far outweighs the bad.
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wow. that's scary and impressive at the same time. The privacy coins have their pros and cons irrespective of their use cases.
The privacy layer is imperative going forward.
What people do not realize is that cryptocurrency is data, not different than any other data. Hence if there is a call for privacy, which many are, then we are going to see it apply to anything.
It is truly an all or none situation.
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I agree. Privacy of any data that we own is the most important property we have. The way things are shaping for future industries, privacy coins will have signficant importance.
There are a lot of moving parts right now. We are seeing so much development that is starting to come together.
Over time, the holes will be exposed and people will step up and fill them.
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Yep, they have both.
But they are now very much here to stay and there's no point in regulators sticking their head in the sand and trying to ignore them.
The entire financial system is about to change.
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That's true. It will be interesting to see the how the regulation ecosystem move forward with crypto projects. Governments are trying to regulate stable coins as it is directly interfering with their national currencies. Once they have regulations for stable coins, they will definitely focus on privacy coins. The system is about the change big time.
So where did the trail end??🤔🤔
Have a slice of !PIZZA
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You wallet. It is all a set up.
So I suggest you dont answer your door.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Well the stolen ETH continues to go through the mixer that has the capability to pass the trail onto the authorities.
We'll have to wait and see.
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It's amazing how this unfolded, I was reading it and thought oh man there goes Crypto.com.
I would guess they are insured.
It will end up costing them nothing other than some bad PR. Of course, does that drive away people.
I think many use it for the payment feature.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
But in the grand scheme of things, 15 mill is fuck all to a business the size of Crypto.com.
They'll fix their centralised storage vulnerability, likely receive an insurance payout and everything will carry on as is.
No customer funds were ever in danger, the Ethereum network was never in danger.
It's all good ;)
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It is going to be very interesting to see what comes out in the next couple years. One project I am interested in seeing what happens is Litecoin's implementation of Mimble Wimble. From what I understand, which isnt much on this topic, is that it will add a privacy layer also. It will make it so transactions cannot be traced, or at least are more difficult.
Couple that with Monero pool on Thorchain and we could see a lot of exciting stuff happening.
As I said, the Nation-State cant even stop the illegal download of music. How are they going to deal with this?
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I just can't get excited about anything to do with Litecoin.
There are so many chains that are cheaper and more decentralised.
I really don't see a place for it in the future.
But if they're still developing privacy coin related code, it will ultimately help the industry as a whole so that is a plus.
And yep, Napster truly changed the world!
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Yeah it is old technology that really hasnt advanced that much. Perhaps that is the reason they are so silent.
The challenge with Litecoin is if they become popular, they will get attacked in the PoW/environment issue.
Bitcoin can stand up I am not sure that Litecoin can withstand that.
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Lots of stolen funds have been carted away via Tornado Cash in last year alone. Starting from the MonoX hack, 8ight Finance hack and others. If Tornado Cash has been updated to reveal source of transfer then it's a big one for us.
That way, hackers won't go untraceable any more.
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Tornado Cash have said that they have the capability to trace funds.
And if there is a centralised figurehead saying that they have the capability, then you know that there is eventually going to be a government that forces their hand.
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