The perpetrator behind one of the largest ETH heists in history has moved the stolen funds for the first time in two years, according to on-chain detective ZachXBT.
According to the analyst, the hacker transferred 51,000 ETH ($170.9 million) in batches of 5,000 coins from 10 wallets to a single multisig address. The entire procedure took 24 minutes.
The ‘Blockchain Bandit’ earned his moniker between 2016 and 2018 through a series of attacks targeting wallets with ‘weak private keys’.
Flaws in the pseudorandom number generation mechanism and other issues in the early version of the Ethereum protocol allowed him to systematically ‘guess’ secret combinations.
The hacker automated this process and breached 732 addresses, extracting approximately 45,000 ETH through 49,060 transactions.
According to Adrian Bednarek, senior security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators, the perpetrator may be linked to North Korean hacking groups, although no evidence has been found yet.
The ‘Blockchain Bandit’s’ funds had remained dormant since January 21, 2023.
Earlier, the threat of attacks from North Korean hackers triggered a net outflow of $249 million from the Hyperliquid protocol.