Bitcoin’s Luke Dashjr, one of the core developers behind the cryptocurrency, has not started 2023 on a bright note. His crypto wallet was hit by a hack, resulting in the loss of 216.93 BTC from his personal holdings. At the time of writing, BTC was priced at $16,570 (roughly 13.7 lakh). This means that Dashjr lost an estimated US$3.6 million (approximately Rs. 30 million) in the cyber attack. The notorious actor(s) claimed access to the privacy key of Dashjr’s crypto wallet and siphoned off most of his total BTC holdings.
The hackers exploited Dashjr’s Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) key – which would have allowed the hacker(s) to infiltrate two private keys to execute the fund drain.
“Help please,” Dashjr tweeted when sharing details about the incident. Visibly disappointed, he later tweeted: “It’s basically all gone”. The software mogul also shared a wallet address where the stolen Bitcoin were allegedly diverted.
PSA: My server was accessed by an unknown person this morning. Full analysis in progress, but take extra care to have all downloads PGP verified. #Bitcoin
— @LukeDashjr@BitcoinHackers.org on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) November 17, 2022
As of now, the exact details of how the hack was carried out remain unclear. However, his Twitter followers suspect that a post he made on November 17 may have exposed his server vulnerabilities to the hacker(s) who exploited and slashed it wallet to their favor.
First round of analysis completed.
Evidence suggests that the attacker installed 2-3 remote shell backdoors but didn’t touch anything else.Next up is an even more extreme check, but given what I’ve seen so far, I don’t expect it to show up any more.
— @LukeDashjr@BitcoinHackers.org on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) November 17, 2022
Changpeng Zhaothe manager of Binance crypto exchange expressed “sadness” over the incident and implied that Dashjr kept his BTC in a self-custodial wallet.
“Self-custody comes with other risks,” Zhao tweeted.
Sad to see even an OG #Bitcoin Core developer lost over 200 BTC ($3.5 million). Self-custody has a different set of risks.
We will try to observe and see where we can help. :pray: https://t.co/9eGZ7AFgC2
— CZ :large_orange_diamond: Binance (@cz_binance) January 1, 2023
With self-custodial wallets, users do not have to rely on crypto exchanges or wallet providers to store their private keys in their own systems.
The buzz around Self Custody of Crypto Assets attracted attention after the users of FTX crypto exchange lost over $1 billion after the platform ran out of liquidity and collapsed.
In fact, due to back-to-back hack attacks on crypto exchanges, around 550,000 bitcoins worth US$9.2 billion (around Rs.76,760 billion) left the reserves of crypto exchanges in self-custodial wallets in 2022.
Zhao was one of the first mainstream crypto industry leaders to revitalize the importance of crypto asset self-custody following the demise of FTX.
In November, Zhao had recommended Members of the crypto community to start custodial small amounts of assets to understand how self-custody tools and technologies work.
Details of Dashjr’s stolen funds remain unknown for now. An investigation may have been launched in this case.
As with Dashjr LinkedIn detailshe has been a core developer for bitcoin since 2011 and claims to have over 23 years of programming experience.
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