The 1st of January, New Year’s Day, proved to be the worst one for a Bitcoin Core developer, as millions of his funds in Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency in the market, were hacked. Luke Dashjr, the longest-contributing Bitcoin Core developer, revealed that an anonymous hacker had raided almost all of his Bitcoin holdings. However, the total sum of Bitcoin stolen is unknown.
In a Twitter thread, Luke Dashjr said that some of this hacked amount was from a wallet address that received a little under 217 Bitcoin, worth around $3.6 million at the current price. In a tweet, Luke wrote that the PGP key was compromised, and at least multiple of his bitcoins was stolen. Luke blamed the hack of his Bitcoin wallet on a compromised PGP key and later. In a Reddit discussion, Luke claimed that the attacker’s IP came from a ColoCrossing server.
Luke didn’t know how his cold wallets were compromised, but he said that the last time he had accessed them was in September. Luke also posted a follow-up tweet calling out ColoCrossing for allegedly dropping the ball on the abuse investigation last time, and he vowed to change his server provider. And today, on the 2nd of January, in a tweet, Luke claimed that everything is compromised. He also appeared to call the FBI for help in this case.
However, Changpeng Zhao, the founder & CEO of Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, showed support for Luke, saying that the security team will monitor it, and if it comes in the way, they will freeze it. Changpeng also linked this hack as an example of the risks of having cryptocurrency in self-custody wallets.
