In a collaborative effort involving law enforcement and cyber authorities, a victim who goes by the pseudonym L3yum on X (formerly known as Twitter) has achieved a significant breakthrough following a hack that resulted in the loss of 90 Ether.
The victim has managed to have the perpetrator’s Tether address placed on a blacklist, potentially enabling the recovery of a substantial portion of the stolen funds.
The breach occurred on March 16, when the hacker successfully acquired access to L3yum’s hot wallet seed phrase.
Subsequently, a collection of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) associated with Yuga Labs, as well as cryptocurrencies and NFTs from smaller projects, were pilfered.
These ill-gotten assets were swiftly liquidated or traded by the attacker.
In a recent post on Aug. 11 on X, L3yum conveyed the successful outcome: “Today after working with the police and cyber team in my country, I was able to get the stolen funds sitting in USDT frozen and black listed.”
The involved Ethereum-based USDT address, linked to the hacker, has now been rendered inactive, marking a significant step towards recovering the stolen assets.
At present, the 90 ETH translates to roughly $166,000, while the blacklisted wallet contains $107,306 worth of USDT, implying that the victim might not fully recoup their losses.
The question of whether the victim will receive restitution remains unanswered.
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However, history suggests that when a USDT address faces blacklisting under similar circumstances, Tether has previously destroyed the blacklisted USDT and reissued an equivalent amount of the asset to the original owner.
It’s important to note that the process of blacklisting a USDT address by Tether typically follows a court order, as has been observed in previous cases.
L3yum indicated that while this seemed to be the likely course of action, confirmation is still pending.
Responding to comments, L3yum clarified, “This is the part I’m unsure about but yeah from my understanding this is how it works and the funds that are blacklisted are essentially burnt.
Don’t quote me on that though, but that is my understanding!”
The circumstances that enabled the hacker to obtain the seed phrase back in March are yet to be fully determined.
However, initial speculation pointed towards possibilities such as SIM swapping, inadvertent seed phrase storage on iCloud, or the use of the wallet across multiple devices.
While details remain unclear, L3yum’s proactive efforts, coupled with the cooperation of law enforcement and cyber experts, have paved the way for potential recovery in this intricate crypto hack saga.
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