The Hunt for the FTX Thieves Has Begun

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.wired.com/story/ftx-hack-theft-crypto-tracing/

Cryptocurrency has always offered a strange mix of temptations and challenges for anyone trying to steal it. As digital cash, held in multibillion-dollar sums on hackable, internet-connected networks, it presents a lucrative target. But once it's stolen, the blockchains that almost every cryptocurrency is built on make it possible to follow that money's every movement and, very often, to identify the thieves. So after a massive heist pulled nearly half a billion dollars worth of funds out of the already collapsing FTX cryptocurrency exchange yesterday, the world's crypto tracers are now closely tracking where that loot ends up-and looking for any clues that reveal the thief to be an FTX insider or just an opportunistic hacker.

On Friday, hours after the major cryptocurrency exchange FTX had filed for bankruptcy in the wake of its epic, 10-figure collapse, FTX's remaining funds were drained of more than $663 million worth of cryptocurrency, much of which appears to have been stolen. "FTX has been hacked," wrote an administrator in FTX's Telegram channel. "FTX apps are malware. Delete them." [...]

[...] "We're definitely watching the movements of these funds," says Chris Janczewski, the head of investigations at TRM Labs and a former special agent at the IRS's criminal investigations division. "This potential thief has hundreds of millions of dollars. But it's like they went into a bank, took as much cash as they could carry, and then the dye packs went off. They've got all this money, but now everyone knows it's connected to this bank robbery. What can you actually do with it?"

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.