An unknown hacker stole $300 thousand worth of bitcoins from the Russian FSB and transferred them to Ukraine
An unknown hacker has discovered 986 bitcoin wallets controlled by Russia’s FSB, Foreign Intelligence Service, and military intelligence. He found $300,000 worth of bitcoins in them and then began transferring the cryptocurrency to Ukraine.
Source. This was reported by The Moscow Times with reference to CoinDesk, which received a report on the case from Chainalysis, an American company that analyzes blockchain and cryptocurrency transactions. Chainalysis’ clients include the US government.
According to Chainalysis, in order to find the wallets of the special services, an unknown person used a function that documents transactions in the bitcoin blockchain. It happened before the war in Ukraine, and the hacker sent out a message in Russian, where he stated that these wallets were used by intelligence agencies to finance hacking operations.
Initially, the hacker wanted to destroy bitcoins from the found wallets and, using the OP_RETURN function, which voided previous transactions, did so with $300,000 worth of cryptocurrency, Chainalysis estimated.
But after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he began sending cryptocurrency to wallets opened by the Ukrainian government to raise funds to fight the aggression, Chainalysis noted:
According to its analysis, he gained access to the crypto wallets of the Russian special services not through hacking, but through “insider actions.”
“Simply put, this person could have infiltrated the structure of hackers working for Russia, or he could have been an employee of the Russian special services who switched sides,” Chainalysis said in its report.
