Key Takeaways
- Chainalysis linked three addresses attributed to task scammers to losses of 60 BTC.
- Thieves reportedly emptied three Ledger addresses in separate transfers to the same wallet.
- Ledger blamed a highly organized criminal group for tampering with these hardware wallets.
Analysts at blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis found that three addresses attributed to task scammers collectively lost 60 BTC ($4.9 million) when their Ledger wallets were drained as part of the recent suply chain attack on compromised hardware wallets.
“On Sep 22, the person behind the scam moved the proceeds into three separate Ledger addresses. On Oct 9, thieves emptied all three. One transfer each, into the same wallet,” the firm said, noting that the wallet was reported to contain stolen funds.
A Chain of ‘Poetic Justice’
In a chain of events that some online commenters called “poetic justice,” two groups of criminals have now apparently lost their money.
First, people fell for the task scam, agreeing to write fake sales reviews for real items in exchange for money. The scammers then told these “reviewers” to add their own money to their “negative” balances to get paid, effectively sending their funds straight to the scammers’ address. Now, the scammers themselves have lost those funds.
Meanwhile, Taylor Monahan, a security expert at crypto wallet MetaMask, had previously warned that “a few of the victims” of the Ledger crisis were “super shady motherf****rs.”
“LOL imagine being a super clever hardware supply chain hacker and realizing you just stole from the big boss task scam bros,” she said in reaction to news of the task scam wallet theft.
A ‘Highly Organized Criminal Group’
It’s unclear whether those “super shady” apparent “victims” have any vendetta plans against the Ledger wallet tamperers or the means to carry out such plans. Ledger itself claims that a “highly organized criminal group” carried out the attack against its device users. The group may also have been well-funded before the attack.
According to the company, the criminals “spent millions” on the attack. As Bitcoin.com News reported, Cryptobilis, the company that sold the Ledger wallets affected by the exploit, had been acquired by an undisclosed party earlier this year.
“We are working with law enforcement and the security community to follow the funds and dismantle the attackers’ infrastructure,” Ledger said. On Oct. 15, the company also said it had checked its own stock by “checking large number of samples, and did not find any compromised units.”
Despite the ongoing crisis and unverified reports of $93 million in crypto asset losses among users of the hardware wallet, Ledger unveiled its upcoming $849 Android device, Atom, on Oct. 15.
