Jisanbd24 ETH stolen from the Upbit exchange
Binance stopped an attempt by hackers who hacked the Upbit exchange to launder the stolen ETH and froze them. Changpeng Zhao announced that 137 ETH will be returned to Upbit.
On Wednesday, May 13, around 7 p.m. Moscow time, Whale Alert tweeted that 137 ETH, equivalent to $ 27,000 at the current rate, had been transferred to Binance from an address linked to hackers who hacked Upbit last year.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao soon tweeted that the coins transferred by the hackers were frozen and would soon be returned to Upbit. A little over half an hour passed between the transfer of ETH to the exchange and their freezing.
Wallet addresses associated with hacking of cryptocurrency exchanges and other sites receive a special mark, and exchanges usually freeze any assets coming from these addresses. In January 2019, Binance froze funds related to the Cryptopia exchange hack.
Over the past 24 hours, the criminals who hacked Upbit have moved 3,650 ETH between wallets in order to cover their tracks and prepare coins for withdrawal through exchanges. A report from Uppsala earlier this year noted that hackers may have already laundered the equivalent of $ 3.2 million in ETH by withdrawing small amounts from exchanges to avoid raising suspicion.
It's unclear what the hackers' motive was for sending the last batch of ETH to Binance. This is a small amount, considering that in November last year, attackers managed to steal $ 49 million worth of cryptocurrencies. It can be assumed that the hackers checked the exchange's response time to see if large amounts could be withdrawn on the spot.
Last week, the Whale Alert service reported that the ethers stolen from the Upbit exchange were back in motion - hackers moved 1,897 ETH to an unknown address. In total, 342,000 ETH were stolen from the Upbit exchange, while 55,000 ETH were moved to an unknown address a week after the hack.