Chainalysis named the main culprit of the incident around Multichain
Date: 2023-07-11 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: BUSINESS
Chainalysis analysts doubt that Multichain fell victim to hackers and believe that only one person may be behind the incident
Hacking the cross-chain router Multichain (formerly. Anyswap) could be supervised by the head of the project. This version of events was admitted by analysts of the blockchain firm Chainalysis. As experts noted, the Multichain development team itself admitted on Twitter at the end of May that it could not contact the head of the project, Zhao Jun. Due to the loss of the CEO, developers cannot access the project's servers to make changes to the security system.
According to Chainalysis, there are rumors about the arrest of the head of Multichain in China. However, the source of the rumors in Chainalysis was not indicated. According to the firm, local authorities confiscated Zhao Jun about $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency related to Multichain. At the time of writing, Chinese law enforcement agencies have not commented on the arrest.
Chainalysis believes that the Multichain hack is the result of stealing the administrator's private keys, not being hacked with a code-level exploit. This is indicated by multiple audits (including from the firm Trail of Bits), which did not reveal technical vulnerabilities in the project.
The version of the fraud was previously confirmed by the CEO of the Fantom protocol, Michael Kong. He noted that transferring funds from Multichain wallets is not like a regular hack. This is due to the fact that the cryptocurrency that was transferred to the wallets of the alleged attackers was not withdrawn to third-party wallets or mixers to obfuscate surveillance.
In early July, Multichain developers curtailed the project, citing suspicious transactions. Later it turned out that unknown people cleared the project for almost $250 million in various altcoins. In December 2021, the project raised $60 million from the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, as well as Sequoia China, IDG Capital, (now the closed scandalous hedge fund Three Arrows Capital) and others. Binance itself called itself Multichain strategic investors
