Wormhole hacker moves another $46M of stolen funds
2 min read
Another portion of the illegally obtained cryptocurrency from one of the industry’s biggest exploits has been transferred, as on-chain data reveals the movement of $46 million worth of stolen funds from the hacker’s wallet.
In February 2022 , the Wormhole attack resulted in the theft of around $321 million worth of Wrapped ETH (wETH), making it the third largest cryptocurrency hack of the year.
Blockchain security firm PeckShield reported that the wallet associated with the hacker has once again become active, with the transfer of $46 million worth of crypto assets.
This included approximately 24,400 Lido Finance-wrapped Ethereum staking tokens (wstETH), worth around $41.4 million, and 3,000 Rocket Pool Ethereum staking tokens (rETH), worth about $5 million, which were transferred to MakerDAO.
PeckShield reported that the hacker appears to be seeking yield or arbitrage opportunities with their stolen funds, as the assets were exchanged for 16.6 million DAI.
The MakerDAO stablecoin was then used to purchase 9,750 ETH, priced at around $1,537, and 1,000 stETH, which were then re-wrapped into 9,700 wstETH.
#PeckShieldAlert The Wormhole Network Exploiter 0x629e supplied $46M worth of cryptos, including 24.4k $wstETH ($41.4M) & 3k $rETH (~$5M), to MakerDAO for 16.6M $DAI & used them to buy 9.75k $ETH ($ETH at $1,537) & 1k $stETH ($ETH at $1,543), then wrapped them for ~9.7k $wstETH pic.twitter.com/BRfygHgpit
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) February 12, 2023
On February 10th, an on-chain analyst noticed that the hacker was taking advantage of the market dip by buying. However, the value of Ethereum has decreased since then, with a 2.6% decline on the day and trading at $1,505, according to CoinGecko data.
At the time of the transfer, stETH deviated from Ethereum’s value and increased to as much as $1,570, currently trading 2.4% higher at $1,541. wstETH also experienced a deviation and rose to $1,676, 11.3% higher than the original asset.
This recent movement of funds comes just a few weeks after the hacker transferred an additional $155 million worth of Ethereum to a decentralized exchange on January 24th.
95,630 ETH was sent to the OpenOcean DEX and was then converted into ETH-pegged assets, including stETH and wstETH from Lido.
