Hacker transfers 1 million stolen funds to founder of Ethereum cryptocurrency

According to PeckShield, a crypto security company, the attacker who stole 20 million Optimism (OP) tokens sent 1 million of these funds to the wallet of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

#PeckShieldAlert ~1m $OP transfered to @VitalikButerin from Wintermute/OP exploiters https://t.co/U1c2MyeObE pic.twitter.com/wdLOd0XveC

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) June 9, 2022

It is not clear why 1 million OP ($874,000) was sent to Buterin. Analysts are of the opinion that these were mostly illiquid tokens on decentralized exchanges, so fraudsters would not have been able to sell them for a large sum.

Earlier, the hacker received 20 million OR due to a mistake made by the crypto provider Wintermute. Two weeks ago, the Optimism team transferred tokens to Wintermute (it was necessary to prepare the ORs for the drop), but the latter could not access the tokens because the crypto provider provided the wrong wallet address (the provided multisig address was on the first level of Ethereum, not L2). In an attempt to reverse the L2 address, they were beaten to the punch by a hacker, and access to the tokens was lost.

Crypto market maker @wintermute_t accepted responsibility for the theft of 20 million @optimismPBC tokens because it sent the wrong wallet address to Optimism to receive them.@Skesslr reports.https://t.co/5byJfP76s6

— CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) June 9, 2022

Wintermute has admitted their mistake and promised to buy back the stolen Optimism tokens every time hackers sell them. The company’s reserve funds will be used for this purpose. Meanwhile, the hacker was offered a consultant position and a monetary reward if he agrees to return the stolen tokens. For example, the developers of the Aurora blockchain recently paid a «white» hacker $ 6 million for helping to prevent the theft of 70,000 ETH.