The $90M stolen crypto move for the first time in six year by Blockchain Bandit

Hacker accumulated $90 million worth of crypto during a six-year thieving spree.

The $90M stolen crypto move for the first time in six year by Blockchain Bandit

The hacker known as “Blockchain Bandit” has woken after a six-year gap and has started to move their ill-gotten funds.

Around $90 million in crypto pilfered from the attacker’s long-running string of “programmatic theft” since 2016 has started moving over the past week, says the Chainalysis, which included 51,000 ETH  and 470 BTC, worth around $90 million.

Blockchain Bandit stole the funds from wallets through ‘Ethercombing’ that functions by compromising weak private keys wallets. This thrift drained more than 10,000 wallets from individuals across the globe since the first attacks were perpetrated six years ago.

The hacker "Blockchain Bandit" managed to move 45,000 ETH just by successfully guessing those frail private keys  in 2019 alone.

An independent security analyst stated that the hacker had set up a node to automatically filch funds from addresses with weak keys. The researchers identified 732 weak private keys associated with a total of 49,060 transactions. It is unclear how many of those were exploited by the Blockchain Bandit, however, “There was a guy who had an address who was going around and siphoning money from some of the keys we had access to,” said the analyst.

There are such parties with the complete list of ethereum addresses and private keys such as privatekeys.pw which may help compromising user wallets. However, choosing popular wallets and trusted wallet providers is recommended for securing wallets.

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