Crypto exchange Bitfinex returned some of the money stolen in 2016
Date: 2023-07-08 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: IN WORLD
Cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex went to cooperate with the authorities to return about $315,000 stolen in an attack on the platform in 2016.
"We are very pleased that we were able to reach another milestone in the recovery of assets stolen from Bitfinex in 2016," said Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer of the exchange
The money received will be distributed among users who have lost funds as a result of hacking. The refunded funds will be prorated to Recovery Right (RRT) token holders.
The coins were issued to users affected by the 2016 hack. RRT holders can exchange their tokens 1:1 to the dollar. However, there are now about 30 million RRTs in circulation, which suggests that users will not recover the funds in full.
How many BTC were recovered
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security returned the funds as part of a legal proceeding. In total, almost 120,000 bitcoins (BTC) worth about $72 million were stolen from the platform at the 2016 exchange rate. At the current market price of BTC, this is approximately $3.7 billion.
Since the hack, the U.S. government has gradually returned the stolen money. In February 2022, the US Department of Justice also returned 94,000 BTC worth $3.6 billion.
How Bitfinex was hacked
According to analysts of the Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime, the hacking of the exchange in 2016 was the result of inadequate security measures. Experts believe that Bitfinex has not introduced the security measures proposed by its cryptocurrency storage partner BitGo.
In 2016, two out of three digital keys were required for any important transactions on Bitfinex. However, the exchange stored two of them on one device at once. It is not known what kind of device we are talking about.
As a result, the attacker was able to gain full access to Bitfinex's internal systems. It's unclear exactly how he did it. However, one of the keys was associated with the email under the login "admin" and the other under the login "giancarlo". It was owned by the financial director and shareholder of the exchange, Giancarlo Devasini.
