The massive cryptocurrency hack in Binance exchange resulted in a list of interrogations and considerable queries especially after the infamous hacks of Cryptopia, Bithumb, and DragonEx. The security breach took place at 5:15:24 PM on May 7, 2019, where hackers successively stole over 7000 Bitcoins (BTC) in a single transaction from Binance hot wallet into smaller wallets.
The blockchain services company Coinfirm, shared on Twitter that they have been watching the inconsistent movements of bitcoins worth $40 million which were stolen in the latest Binance hack.
On May 8, around 4:11 am, Coinfirm confirmed that the hackers transferred 1214 BTC which is $7.16 million, to new addresses. They later moved the 1227 BTC to two new addresses, One holding 707 BTC the other 520 BTC.
The strategy of moving the bitcoins to smaller wallets pulled by these hackers was in order to erase their tracks. They are succeeding at this so far since it’s a difficult task for the BTC blockchain system to detect on the wallets and who created them even though it’s easy to see where each bitcoin goes.
The hackers’ original addresses still consist of 5786 BTC ( $34.14 million ). This info was distributed by Coinfirm on May 8, 2019.
Changpeng Zhao “CZ”, the founder, and CEO of Binance, earlier said that they considered the rollback on Bitcoin network to prevent the hackers from using the stolen coins. But they eventually ended up rejecting the idea due to the potential negative consequences for the network and also cryptocurrency community.
Mr. Zhao had hosted an Ask-Me-Anything session at 3:00 UTC on May 8, to answer different questions about the hack, which involved the stealing of 7,000 bitcoins from the exchange.
The complete transcription of Ask-Me-Anything session by CZ is here: https://www.binance.com/en/blog/300213018722623488/Full-Transcript-Twitter-AMA-with-CZ
Whether the firm would consider convincing network stakeholders to roll back bitcoin network transactions, which will require pushing for consensus from major miners and mining pools to gather over 51 percent of the network’s total hashing power was questioned and Zhao explained that in order to avoid the negative consequences, in terms of destroying the credibility for bitcoin, the rollback is not a good solution. However, CZ also mentioned that they can do that within the next few days. On the contrary, have major concerns of rolling back because this will impact on the network at a large scale and this would not be the upright decision.
As per several analysts, the hackers had used innovative and advanced methods to gain access to users’ accounts and had arranged the hack patiently, and moving the funds in different smaller accounts simultaneously.
Blockchain analyst and journalist Amy Castor clarified that breaking the transactions up into even smaller amounts will further make it difficult to track.
“Money laundering 101: breaking the transactions up into smaller and smaller amounts making them more and more difficult to track,”
the journalist explained.
But this wasn’t all that the digital world had to go through, days back, the famous American economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz shared his negative thoughts on cryptocurrencies, stating that he thinks cryptocurrencies should be shut down!
Image Source: Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
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