Cryptocurrency
Users lose BRL 170 million in attack on cryptocurrency wallet, company minimizes
The weekend was a bleak one for users of Atomic Wallet, a centralized cryptocurrency wallet and storage service. That’s because information shows that hackers stole about $ 35 million in assets from a portion of wallet customers on June 2th. In reais, this is equivalent to more than R$ 170 million at the current exchange rate.
The stolen tokens included Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), USDT, Dogecoin (DOGE), Litecoin (LTC), BNB and Polygon (MATIC), according to blockchain “detective” @ZachXBT. Yet second him, the five biggest losses represented US$ 17 million (R$ 84 million) in total.
Cryptocurrency Wallet Team Minimizes
In a sequence of Twitter posts about the attack, the Atomic Wallet team tried to downplay the case, stating that less than 1% of users were affected.
“We have received reports of compromised portfolios. We are doing all we can to investigate and review the situation.” tweeted the team. “At the moment, less than 1% of our monthly active users are affected/reported. The last drained transaction was committed more than 40 hours ago.”
Atomic Wallet further stated that a security investigation is ongoing and that it has reported the victims’ addresses to major exchanges in order to track and block the stolen funds.
Several users report on social media that they lost their cryptocurrencies after a recent software update. But other people say that they suffered losses from the hack despite not updating to the latest version.
Phishing Scam Attempts to Steal Affected Users
As if the losses from the hack weren’t enough, malicious actors tried to profit from the commotion. Verified Twitter accounts impersonated the Atomic Wallet team by sharing fake phishing links to supposedly help users recover lost funds.
@ZachXBT warned about this on his social media account: “Watch out. Gold mark phishing scammer in comments.”
The investigator further said that he was able to successfully rescue $1 million in cryptocurrency from one of the victims of the Atomic Wallet hack. However, he did not reveal what technique he used for this. He said he will do so at a later date as it is “better not to disclose now”.
