Canadian Police Arrest Teen For Stealing $36.5 Million In Cryptocurrency (engadget.com) 18
In what's being referred to as the largest-ever cryptocurrency theft involving one person, police in Canada say they recently arrested a teen who allegedly stole $36.5 million worth of cryptocurrency from a single individual in the U.S. Engadget reports: The owner of the currency was the victim of a SIM swap attack. Their cellphone number was hijacked and used to intercept two-factor authentication requests, thereby allowing access to their protected accounts. Some of the stolen money was used to purchase a "rare" online gaming username, which eventually allowed the Hamilton Police Service, as well as FBI and US Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force, to identify the account holder. Police seized approximately $7 million CAD ($5.5 million) in stolen cryptocurrency when they arrested the teen.
Blockchain only as anon as where you transfer (Score:3)
This goes to show that Bitcoin, or any public blockchain cryptocurrency like it, is only as good as whoever you are transferring money to. If you transfer anything to anyone they can extract information from, they can start working back to who you are...
The kid would have got away with it, if it weren't for those meddling adults!
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The kid should have run the bitcoins through a tumbler [wikipedia.org].
He could have anonymized the entire stash for about 1%.
Maybe he will do better when he gets out of juvie.
At first glance good but... (Score:2)
The kid should have run the bitcoins through a tumbler.
Ahh, but which tumblers have not been hacked by the CIA, if they are not outright information honeypots...
If I were the CIA I'd be running the most awesome tumbler on the internet, accepting every possibly kind of cryptocurrency...
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Sounds like someone didn't know how to do atomic swaps with Monero.
Had to do a double take (Score:2)
I literally, in the truest sense of the word, finished reading this article [go.com] about bitcoin being used to launder money, and came here and saw this headline. Had to look twice to make sure the two weren't the same.
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Let that be a lesson to you (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're going to steal a public-ledger cryptocurrency, don't use it to buy anything that in any way links back to your real identity, including anything that you will actually use. Ideally convert it to cash, precious metals, or other untraceable assets as quickly and quietly as possible, before the authorities put the stolen currency under surveillance. At the very least shunt it through a "mixer" (a.k.a. money laundering service), though at this point it's probably wise to assume that they're all infiltrated by the authorities, if they haven't been shut down for, you know, providing an illegal money laundering service.
Remember kids - cryptocurrency is NOT anonymous. In fact it's arguably the least-anonymous class of currency ever conceived of. Even credit and debit cards keep your transactions "need to know", and strictly speaking they're not even a currency.
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I would convert them to Moneros... a lot easier to hide then $36M of gold...
Also I'm pretty sure that companies buy credit card transactions lists all the time...
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Transferring wealth from one public ledger cryptocurrency to another does nothing to hide the trail of ownership. Oh look, the stolen Bitcoins were used to buy this Monero. Do you think the easily traced Monero might belong to the same person?
Meanwhile, at current gold prices $36M translates to about 600kg, or 31L - about 1/10th the volume of a typical bathtub. Not exactly discrete, but a lot easier to hide than a paper trail posted in the town square.
As for transaction lists - obviously anyone willing t
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I'm mostly being humorous. But seriously, even with all the attention that gold would draw... *still* better than sending up a public flare screaming "HEY, I'M SPENDING THAT STOLEN MONEY NOW" with every future transaction, the way you do with cryptocurrencies.
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The lesson is that if you are going to steal cryptocurrency, steal it from a call centre scammer in India or some ransomware gang. They can't report it to the police because the money is illicit in the first place.
If you are going to be extra malicious make it look like the cryptocurrency was taken by an associate first or at the very least someone else.
Re: This is only OK... (Score:2)
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The weakest link (Score:2)
is a cell phone number and two-factor authentication.
Smart enough to steal (Score:2)
Too stupid to spend it in a way that was not obvious. Apparently this person is already a Dunning-Kruger case at a young age.