In this article we’ll go over the basics of hacking a crypto wallet, including Bitfinex, Ledger, Lazarus, and Colonial Pipeline. These wallets use different techniques to keep your money safe. We’ll also take a look at how to make your hardware wallet more secure. In the end, these methods aren’t foolproof, but they should help you protect your money. In the end, these methods won’t work if your hardware wallet is connected to a PC that is infected with malware.
Ledger
A recent phishing scam has been targeting customers of the Ledger crypto wallet. Phishing sites ask for personal information to get access to the wallet. If you receive such a communication, be sure to report it as fake. The wallet has a recovery phrase that you must remember. If you lose it, you will need to recover it. The recovery phrase is a human-readable seed that generates the private key for the wallet. Anyone with the recovery phrase can import the wallet and steal the cryptocurrency.
Bitfinex
The 2016 hack of Bitfinex crypto wallet resulted in the theft of 119,752 Bitcoins. At the time, the coins were worth about $72 million. However, this amount has since risen to nearly $4.5 billion. The alleged thieves obtained these coins from a variety of users, funneling them into one single wallet. Once the funds entered the traditional financial system, investigators tracked down the alleged thieves.
Lazarus
The Lazarus gang is a group of cybercriminals based in North Korea that target blockchain and cryptocurrency companies. They use social engineering and trojanized applications to spread malware throughout the victim’s network. Once inside, the hackers steal private keys to conduct fraudulent blockchain transactions and steal wallet crypto assets. These hackers have a history of stealing over $200 million from companies and organizations. In the past, they’ve targeted centralized cryptocurrency exchanges in Asia. However, in recent months, the Lazarus Group has been targeting decentralized financial services like Bitcoin wallets and exchanges.
Colonial Pipeline
The Department of Justice recovered most of the funds from the DarkSide network after the colonial pipeline went offline last month, resulting in massive fuel shortages and price hikes. The FBI recovered more than $2.3 million of the ransom from the DarkSide crypto wallet, which was password-protected. The funds were seized by the FBI. Several private companies and law enforcement agencies have since hired Chainalysis to help them with their investigations.
Kingpin
The most successful example of a hacker gaining access to a cryptocurrency wallet is one in which a man named Dan Reich lost his $2 million Theta tokens from a Trezor One crypto wallet. Reich then turned to a hacker known as Kingpin to help him retrieve the lost cryptocurrency. In his case, the hacker’s job was to hack into the wallet software and retrieve the lost coins.