Mysterious hacker steals $300,000 in Bitcoin from Russia and donates it to Ukraine
Hacking is somewhat unusual in the unregulated world of cryptocurrency, isn’t it? Almost every other month for the past few years, hackers have targeted and stolen millions of dollars in crypto. But what a mysterious hacker did recently is something we rarely hear about.
A mysterious hacker gained access and stole $300,000 worth of bitcoin belonging to various Russian government agencies. But it’s not that. Instead of using the stolen crypto money, the hacker will have donated it to the war-torn nation of Ukraine.
Hacker donates stolen crypto to Ukraine
The crypto experts say the hacker has transferred the stolen bitcoins to the addresses of Ukrainian volunteersas per CoinDesk report cites Chainalysis, a cryptocurrency monitoring company working with the US government.
The mystery hacker appears to have been able to put blockchain and bitcoin technologies to work against the aggressor state. Using his arcane skills, the hacker gained access to hundreds of crypto wallets, likely belonging to Russian law enforcement agencies.
Chain analysis analysts reportedly believe that the hacker used a function to document transactions in the bitcoin blockchain to identify 986 wallets controlled by the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Federation Armed Forces (GRU), the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), and the Federal Security Service (FSB). , according to a report in The New Voice Of Ukraine, a leading daily news company in the war-torn country.
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What the hacker said in his messages
The hacker left messages in Russian to the owners of the wallets, stating that these wallets were used to pay for the services of hackers working for Russia.
It is not known to what extent these claims are true. Western analysts reportedly consider it indisputable that Russian intelligence services use hackers to carry out a variety of operations.
They note that at least three of the allegedly Russian wallets are already linked to Russia by third parties. Two of them were allegedly involved in the Solar Winds attack, and the third paid for servers used in Russia’s disinformation campaign in the 2016 election.
Hacking through ‘Inside Work’?
The hacker appears to have gained control of the wallets, which he claims were controlled by Russian intelligence services, not through hacking but through “inside work”.
“Simply put, this person could have infiltrated the structure of hackers working for Russia, or he could have been an employee of the Russian special services who later became a defector.
The first hacks were carried out a few weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The hacker was initially determined to destroy only the stolen funds in the wallets of the Russian special services.
But when Russia’s war with Ukraine began, the hacker changed tactics. Since the early days of the war, the Ukrainian government has used cryptocurrency to raise millions of dollars for military and charitable purposes. click here to know how crypto donations have played a key role in helping Ukraine.
According to Chainalysis, some of the wallets involved in this investigation transferred funds to Ukrainian government wallets after the war began. Basically mysterious hacker stopped burning money and started sending it to help UkraineChainalysis said, according to the report.
“The fact that the OP_RETURN sender was both willing and able to burn hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoins to spread their message makes it more likely, in our opinion, that their information is accurate,” the analysts concluded.
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