Iranian Cryptocurrency Exchange Nobitex was hacked for about $ 90 million Wednesday, on the surface of it almost routine exploitation in an industry already treated an exchange of $ 223 million earlier this month.
Below the surface it was anything but. Digging a little deeper reveals that this was not just a cash catch, not actually a cash catch at all, but a political message that could end up being a hammer blasting for one of the primary conflicting in the escalating conflict in the Middle East.
The hackers, the pro-Israeli activist group Gonjeshke Darande, demonstrated their indifference to the monetary gain by transferring the stolen means to a series of inaccessible “vanity” wallets charged with the words as “terrorist”, essentially, they burn these tokens forever.
Politically motivated sabotage
“This seems to be an act of politically motivated sabotage rather than an economically motivated hack,” Elliptic co -founder Tom Robinson said in an interview. “The use of vanity addresses appears to be motivated by wanting to send a message to Nobitex and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
The group, whose Farsi name means predator sparrow, leaked the following day the exchange of exchange, leaving any back -tokens on the platform vulnerable to theft.
“To bypass sanctions don’t pay.” Gonjeshke Darande wrote on x along with screens of “Vanity” wallets that store the stolen funds.
The regime has been under sanctions for years as because of international concerns about its human rights record and attempts to develop nuclear weapons. The European Union imposed sanctions in 2011 and has renewed them every year since, even strengthened them in the meantime. American sanctions derive back as far as 1979, to the Iranian Revolution.
Israel said Iran, who has promised to eliminate the Jewish state several times over the years, was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran says its program is purely peaceful. Last week, immediately before Israel’s air strikes, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had violated its non-dispersal obligations.
Gonjeshke Darande’s tweet refers to accusations of Iran’s use of cryptocurrency to avoid sanctions and repeat the senators Elizabeth Warren and Angus King traveled to former US President Joe Biden by 2024.
Without Nobitex, Iran, a nation already hampered by oil and economic sanctions, can fight to move capital around in a time of intense conflict. It could weaken its efforts to mobilize and start attacks to Israel.
The truth about vanity wallets
There has been some discussion about vanity wallets. Does the group have access to the filced tokens, or have they been burned forever?
There is “practically zero chance -attackers checking these addresses,” Yeh, a security researcher at Hacken told Coindesk.
Creating vanity addresses with a private key to unlock them “is calculated trivial task and can be performed in micro/milliseconds,” Rudytsia said. But finding the 26-character private key would require as many as ~ 2¹⁵² attempts. “It is practically impossible to find the private key that maps such a public address.”
Which means the money has gone.
