Blockchain security investigators have identified suspicious transactions that suggest a likely multimillion-dollar theft from a subsidiary of SBI, A major Japanese group.
In cooperation with crypto security experts from Cyvers, blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said that last week, on September 24th, “suspicious outflows” from SBI Crypto-linked bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), litecoin (LTC), dogecoin (DOGE), and bitcoin cash (BCH) addresses, worth around $21 million, were registered.
According to the investigator, the stolen funds were transferred to five instant exchanges and deposited into the Tornado Cash crypto mixer.
While the attack vector is unknown, security expert and researcher Taylor Monahan from the most popular ETH wallet, MetaMask, urged everyone to “stop updating your zoom sdk [software development kit]” because “it doesn’t update your sdk it’s just malware.”
As of the time of writing, neither SBI Group nor SBI Crypto has addressed the issue publicly. The SBI Crypto mining pool is engaged in mining bitcoin, litecoin, dogecoin, and bitcoin cash.
In the past month, it accounted for almost 2% of the total bitcoin mining hashrate, or the computational power of the network.
Meanwhile, according to ZachXBT, the SBI attack has “several indicators that share similarities” with other known attacks orchestrated by North Korean hackers.
In its latest report on these state-sponsored criminals, blockchain analysis company Chainalysis said that North Korean IT workers “continue to infiltrate IT companies globally to earn income, often in cryptocurrency, used to finance North Korea’s production of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.”
