What to know:
- An unknown whale lost $25.6 million after its wallet suffered another phishing attack.
- PeckShield traced the stolen 20 million DAI and 3,000 ETH to four separate addresses.
- The same wallet lost $24.2 million in 2023, but 90% of those funds were later returned.
A phishing attack drained $25.6 million from an unidentified crypto whale on Aug. 12, marking the second major breach linked to the same wallet. According to on-chain analyst Specter, the attacker exchanged the stolen tokens for Dai and Ethereum.
In turn, the blockchain security company PeckShield rated aWBTC as the most expensive lost asset with a sum of $6.3 million. The address also lost $5.1 million in DAI and $4.7 million in Wrapped Bitcoin.
What Happened in the Whale’s Two Phishing Attacks?
The attacker removed about $2.6 million in ETH. The drain also included smaller holdings of cbBTC, USDS, Lido DAO, and Curve DAO tokens.
Source: X
Thus, the total value of assets stolen was converted into 20 million DAI and 3,000 ETH. PeckShield was able to trace the proceeds to four addresses.
Also Read: US Court Backs Bybit to Trace $1.5B North Korea Hack
However, no funds from the latest phishing attack had been returned. This differs from the 2023 incident, when the attacker returned about 90% of the stolen assets.
The same address suffered an earlier phishing attack in September 2023. Specter said malicious token approvals enabled the theft of about $24.2 million.
The attacker stole about 4,851 Rocket Pool ETH and 9,579.2 Lido Staked ETH. The tokens were later swapped for roughly 13,785 ETH and 1.64 million DAI.
How the Whale’s Loss Compares With August Hacks
However, 90% of them were returned to the victim. Although the current theft amounts to almost $1.4 million more compared to the previous one in 2023, it has not led to any return of funds yet.
Therefore, overall, these two incidents led to almost $50 million in theft from the address. However, this is the total amount of funds drained in both cases without considering the amount of money returned in the case of the first theft.
The whale’s latest loss occurred in a particularly busy month for crypto security. DefiLlama reported 13 incidents in August worth more than $12 million.
Payment processor Coinsbuy accounted for most of the tracked losses after losing $7.9 million on Aug. 9. DefiLlama’s August total includes the Coinsbuy hack but does not include the whale’s $25.6 million loss.
Among other listed losses were $2 million in RRWallet, $907,000 in MOKE, $696,000 in LOOPSDAO and $673,000 in RISEx. None of them approached the figures from Coinsbuy and the whale.
Crypto Jargon claimed that repeated phishing attacks proved the need for a comprehensive reaction to the compromise of a crypto wallet. The analyst advised revoking all malicious approvals and moving the rest of the funds to a new wallet.
Also Read: Coldcard Hacker Moves $1.9M in Bitcoin as Wallet Activity Returns
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