Luke Dashjr, one of the core developers of the world's first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, reported a loss of over 200 coins in a recent hack on December 31, 2022, ahead of the new year. According to Dashjr, his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) key was compromised that led to the theft of most of his coins. On January 1 this year, he posted on Twitter that a hacker had allegedly accessed his PGP key to carry out the theft. PGP is a common security method that is used to access encrypted information. He shared a few of the wallet addresses where some of his stolen Bitcoins were transferred. However, he has not revealed the total amount of BTC stolen from his wallet.
In a tweet, he said he had "no idea how" his coins were stolen and that he needed help.
The wallet address that he tweeted about displayed details about four transactions between 2:08 and 2:16 PM UTC on December 31. It contained information on a total of 216.93 BTC, which is worth more than $3.6 million at the current price.
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Earlier in November 2022, he had tweeted about his server being compromised by some "new malware/backdoors on the system."
He said, "PSA: My server was accessed this morning by an unknown person. Full analysis in progress, but take extra care that you PGP-verified any downloads."
He informed a user on the microblogging platform that he came to know about the recent hack only after Coinbase and Kraken mailed him about login attempts.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said, "Sorry to see you lose so much. Informed our security team to monitor. If it comes our way, we will freeze it. If there is anything else we can help with, please let us know. We deal with these often, and have Law Enforcement (LE) relationships worldwide."
Many have been speculating that bad security could have been the reason for the reported loss of Dashjr's Bitcoins.
Some Twitter users wondered if it was just a "boating accident" and not a hack. He was referring to a situation where people usually claim they lost their Bitcoins in order to avoid paying exorbitant taxes.
The latest news of alleged hacking has sparked a debate about self-custody. Zhao has been alerting the crypto community about self-custody after the FTX failure. Earlier, he said, "Sad to see even an OG #Bitcoin Core Developer lost 200+ BTC ($3.5 million). Self-custody [has] a different set of risks."
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