Arkham Intelligence Reveals $14 Billion Bitcoin Hack on LuBian Mining Pool
Arkham Intelligence has revealed the largest crypto hack to date, involving the theft of Bitcoin worth $3.5 billion at the time, now valued at $14 billion. This hack targeted LuBian, a Chinese mining pool.
Key Details
- 127,426 BTC were stolen from LuBian in December 2020.
- LuBian was one of the largest mining pools, controlling almost 6% of the Bitcoin network's hash rate as of May 2020.
- The initial hack occurred on December 28, 2020, with over 90% of its BTC taken.
- A subsequent theft of $6 million in BTC and USDT happened on December 29.
- This hack surpasses the $1.5 billion Bybit hack from February 2023.
- Bybit's hack involved the theft of over 400,000 ETH using social engineering tactics.
Recovery Attempts
- LuBian attempted to recover the stolen Bitcoin by sending OP_RETURN messages to the hacker, spending 1.4 BTC across 1516 transactions.
- The messages indicate that the hacking method was likely through brute-force attacks on weakly generated private keys.
- LuBian currently holds 11,886 BTC, worth around $1.35 billion.
- The hacker remains in possession of the stolen Bitcoin, consolidating it into another wallet in July 2024, making them the 13th largest BTC holder.
