Coinbase and other exchanges have blacklisted the address associated with the hackers who hacked Twitter accounts. However, it continues to receive small amounts of BTC - probably from "fans" of hackers.
As reported by Forbes, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said it prevented more than 1,100 of its users from transactions of 30.4 BTC to hackers responsible for hacking Twitter accounts of a number of large projects and celebrities to send messages about the BTC “giveaway”.
Coinbase Chief Information Officer Philip Martin revealed that only 14 users managed to send BTC, the equivalent of roughly $ 3,000, to the fraudulent address before the exchange blacklisted it.
Recall that on July 15, hackers hacked the Twitter accounts of Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Elon Musk, as well as Binance, CZ (founder of Binance), Coinbase, Gemini, Gate.io and Kucoin. The accounts of Tron founder Justin Sun, popular trader Angelo ฿ TC, news site CoinDesk, and other major accounts were also hacked. In total, the scammers managed to earn about $ 120,000 in BTC.
Although Coinbase and other exchanges quickly blocked the scammers' address, small BTC transfers continue to flow to it, ranging in value from a few cents to just over $ 28, according to blockchain reviewers. They may be overdue victims of a scam, but analysts at Chainalysis believe there is another explanation: fans want to tip the hackers.
“We can only guess why small transfers continue to arrive at addresses. One possible explanation is that people often send tips to such addresses to demonstrate their approval of the hacker's actions, "analysts say.
These transactions come with very small fees, so the last tip is still unconfirmed - some even a day after the transactions were made. However, it is unlikely that scammers will be able to use the funds received anytime soon. Every cryptocurrency security company in the world is probably monitoring hacker-linked addresses right now.
"Given the close monitoring of the stolen funds, any participants in transactions with these BTC will undergo a thorough scrutiny," added a spokesman for Chainalysis.
Recall that shortly after the attack, Twitter tech support said that a "coordinated attack using social engineering" was carried out to gain access to the accounts. The attackers were able to hack into the computers of some of the company's employees who had access to internal tools.
Analyst firm Elliptic later reported that 22% of the bitcoins received by fraudsters from hacking popular Twitter accounts were transferred to the Wasabi Wallet.