The hacker behind the $68 million address poisoning scam has decided to contact the victim. He has asked Ethereum Blockchain’s Telegram to start the conversation about returning the stolen assets, which has sent shockwaves through the crypto community.

“We both know $7 million is enough to live very comfortably, but $70 million will keep you up at night,” one of the messages left by the attacker read.

A week has passed since the assets were stolen. Many speculations have emerged, but the reason for the hacker returning the assets remains unclear.

An unknown victim lost an astonishing $68 million in cryptocurrency by sending the amount to a fraudulent address that resembled the real one. The $68 million was worth more than 1,155 wrapped Bitcoin.

Hacker’s act of address poisoning

Address poisoning is the act where a hacker deliberately sends spam transactions from almost identical addresses with a malicious purpose. The wrong wallet addresses are created by shortening the true wallet addresses. The wrong wallet addresses display only the wrong address’s first and last six characters.

This hides the middle portion of the address, making it look similar. The differences in the middle are not obvious on the surface. A wallet address can be as long as 42 characters. The victims are expected to copy and paste the addresses from earlier transaction histories without having to verify them. 

The hacker converted the stolen assets into multiple Ethereum addresses shortly after scamming the victim. Recently, a blockchain security firm called SlowMist noted that several of the hacker’s IP addresses originated from a station based in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, the hacker might have used a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to conduct the transactions. The hacker also carried out a similar attack on the Tom network.

The cryptocurrency platform has experienced significant losses. Crypto hacks accounted for $21 million of these losses. Flash loan fraud resulted in a loss of $129,000, while exit scams caused $4.3 million in losses. According to CertiK, cryptocurrency project losses from attackers have dropped by 114% within the last month.

This highlights an improvement in security within the crypto space. Since the turn of the year, crypto project losses have been estimated to be $499 million. Metamask has encouraged users to avoid making transactions from their history.

Also read: Joe Biden Threatens Veto on New Crypto Legislation