Victim of NFT theft recuperates part of the funds with help of Cyber Police
The victim of a malicious hack has managed to potentially salvage a significant portion of their funds after the hacker’s Tether address was blacklisted. This comes after the victim lost nearly $170,000 in nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and other crypto assets.
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Call the cyber police
NFT art collector and trader “L3yum” fell victim to a hack on March 16. The attacker successfully compromised L3yum’s hot wallet after obtaining its seed phrase. Several Yuga Labs-related NFTs, including two Mutant Apes (MAYC) and one Otherside Koda, and cryptocurrencies from lesser-known projects were taken and swiftly liquidated.
In a detailed X thread dated August 11, L3yum revealed the significant progress made.
Currently, the value of 90 Ether stands at approximately $166,000. Given that the blacklisted hacker’s wallet contains $107,306 in USDT, it is evident that L3yum might not recover the entirety of the stolen funds or his NFTs.
Centralization of USDT is useful at times like this
Previously, when a USDT address was blacklisted under similar situations, Tether typically incinerated the blacklisted assets, subsequently re-issuing an equivalent amount to the original owner. CZ, the CEO of Binance, recently fell victim to a sophisticated attack that also required Tether to blacklist the wallet of the hacker.
It’s imperative to note that blacklisting a USDT address isn’t a hasty decision. Usually, it necessitates a court order. When probed about this process in the comments, L3yum acknowledged that this method was probable, but its finalization was still pending.
How did the victim get compromised?
The original breach’s details remain ambiguous. Speculations from March suggest that L3yum might have fallen prey to a SIM-swap, inadvertently backed up their seed phrase on iCloud, or possibly utilized the compromised wallet across multiple devices. As investigations continue, the crypto community watches closely, reminding all of the importance of digital security.
