A developer from Ukraine stole cryptocurrency from Russian drug traffickers to transfer it to Ukrainians

Ukrainian IT specialist Alex Golden and his Hold Security team reported success in the cyberwar with Russia — the programmers hacked the Russian Solaris darknet marketplace and gained access to the platform’s funds. Hold Security managed to transfer 1.6 BTC from the Solaris crypto wallet (about $ 25,000 at the time of the transfer) to the Ukrainian charity foundation Zhyttelyub.

We are proud of another great step in our fight with cybercrime and Killnet. Via insider access Russian drug platform — Solaris, we were able to get most of their data. We were also able to divert money from the drug proceeds to a charity in Ukraine. https://t.co/QJmicNe9Kc

— HoldSecurity (@HoldSecurity) December 22, 2022

According to Hold Security’s Twitter post, the Russian marketplace received 1.6 VTS from the sale of drugs. Obviously, Solaris’s total revenue is many times higher, but transactions through the platform’s wallet are very fast, so it rarely holds more than 3 BTC.

«Perhaps the Kremlin will not protect the drug trade in its own country and will start solving drug problems instead of attacking Ukraine,» Alex Golden said.

In addition to bitcoins, Hold Security received confidential information about Solaris users and transactions. The company believes that this data can and should be used to locate Russian cybercriminals who use the site to support their operations. Golden said that his colleagues have already learned about Solaris' cooperation with the pro-Russian hacker group Killnet.

As a reminder, Russia was ranked third in the anti-rating of countries by the number of cybercrimes related to digital assets. Coincub experts noted that a large number of ransomware is being developed in Russia. It is believed that Russian hackers created such virus programs as Conti, REvil, Ryuk and Netwalker. As for the government of the Russian Federation, the ruling elite supports the activities of hacker groups instead of fighting them.