A veteran bitcoin (BTC) developer, Luke Dashjr, claims to have lost “basically” all of his BTC as a result of a hack that occurred just before the new year.
In a message posted on January 1 on Twitter, the developer claimed that the suspected hackers had somehow accessed his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) keya common security method that uses two keys to access encrypted information.
in the thread, shared a wallet address to which some of the stolen BTC had been sent, but did not disclose how much BTC was stolen from him in total.
PSA: My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen. I have no idea how. Help please. #Bitcoin
— @[email protected] on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) January 1, 2023
PSA: My PGP key is compromised, and at least a lot of my bitcoins were stolen. I have no idea how. Please help. #Bitcoin
At the time of writing this article, the address of the wallet in question shows four transactions between 2:08 and 2:16 pm UTC on December 31, totaling 216.93 BTC, valued at $3.6 million at current prices.
Dashjr said he had “no idea how” the attackers got access to his keythough some in the community have pointed to a possible connection to an earlier Twitter post by Dashjr on November 17 that noted that their server had been compromised by “new malware/system backdoors.”
PSA: My server was accessed this morning by an unknown person. Full analysis in progress, but take extra care that you PGP-verify any downloads. #Bitcoin
— @[email protected] on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) November 17, 2022
PSA: An unknown person has accessed my server this morning. Full analysis in progress, but be especially careful to check with PGP any downloads. #Bitcoin
Dashjr told a user in his most recent Twitter thread that he had only become aware of the recent hack after receiving emails from Coinbase and Kraken about login attempts.
The incident has also caught the attention of Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who offered his condolences and support. in a post from January 1.
“I’m sorry to see you lose so much. I have informed our security team to keep an eye on it. If it reaches us, we will freeze it. If there is anything else we can help with please let me know. We deal with this often and have relationships with law enforcement around the world,” he wrote..
Some members of the cryptocurrency community have speculated that the loss is due to a lack of security..
In a Reddit thread from January 1, a user who goes by the name SatStandard suggested that Dashjr may not have taken the November 17 breach “seriously enough” and later suggested that the bitcoin developer “did not keep different activities separate.”.
“I had a hot wallet on the same computer that I did everything else on. It seems he was very accommodating.”
For his part, some others seem to suggest that it may not have been a hack, suggesting that someone had stumbled upon the seed phrase somehow, or that it was part of an unfortunate “boating accident” before tax season..
A boating accident in this context is in reference to a joke and meme originally used by gun enthusiasts, but since reused by the cryptocurrency community about people trying to avoid paying taxes by claiming they lost all their BTC in a “tragic boating accident.”
Top tier boating accident.
— Nate (@beeforbacon1) January 1, 2023
First level boating accident.
Cointelegraph reached out to Dashjr via Twitter for more information about the alleged hack, but did not hear back by the time the article was published.
The news has also ignited a debate around self-custody, which became a hot topic after the FTX collapse last year.
Zhao of Binancewhich previously warned the cryptocurrency community about self-custody, He said: “It’s sad to see that even a veteran bitcoin developer lost more than 200 BTC ($3.5 million). Self-custody [tiene] a different set of risks”.
The BTC influencer on online social media Udi Wertheimer also took the time to question whether self-custody was a viable and secure option, commenting that one “shouldn’t manage your own keys”.
“If even one of the veteran bitcoin developers messes this up, I really don’t know how other people are expected to do it safely.”
“That’s not to say self-custody is bad. But you shouldn’t manage keys directly,” he said..
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