Are the KuCoin hackers DeFi noobs?
After a major hack on the KuCoin cryptocurrency exchange, the cyber criminals continue to transfer the stolen cryptocurrency to decentralized exchanges
According to data from the crypto transaction monitoring service Whale Alert, the KuCoin hackers are still sending Synthetix Network Token ( SNX ) worth thousands of US dollars to Uniswap. This is the largest decentralized financial protocol (DeFi) according to the values used.
On September 28, the hacker made another series of transactions in which stolen money was transferred from KuCoin to the large decentralized exchange Uniswap. According to data from Whale Alert hackers have today in four blocks of transactions of dollars in stolen SNX token to this DEX least 1.2 million sent .
According to data from Whale Alert, the KuCoin hackers also sent Chainlink ( LINK ) and SNX worth $ 5 million to unknown wallets. A spokesman for Whale Alert told Cointelegraph that at least $ 4.2 million of that amount has actually been converted to ether ( ETH ) with the help of Uniswap and Kyber .
The analysts at Whale Alert were able to identify at least three ETH addresses that contain coins from the KuCoin hack . „I don’t think they are aware of how visible their tracks are,“ said a spokesman for Whale Alert.
Following the September 26th KuCoin hack , several centralized exchanges took action to prevent hackers from withdrawing the stolen money.
Up to $ 129 million of the estimated $ 200 million stolen was frozen
Dovey Wan, founding partner of the blockchain-based investment company Primitive Ventures, believes the KuCoin hackers are apparently „DeFi noobs“ because they first tried to sell the stolen tokens on the largest centralized exchange in the world, Binance. „The KuCoin hacker is apparently a defi-noob. He tried to sell on Binance and did not exchange USDT on Curve,“ said Wan.
Wan said DeFi could be a handy tool for hackers because the DeFi infrastructure is actually made up of natural cryptocurrency mixers. These are services with which users can „mix“ their coins with those of other users in order to remain undetected:
„The entire defibrillator infrastructure is a natural blender with extremely low slack. Hackers with normal IQ will soon find that this isn’t some alpha leak and that the defibrator infrastructure is designed to serve all purposes If a hacker is able to hack a centralized exchange, it makes no sense that he / she has no idea how to liquidate the money through decentralized exchanges. „