A cybersecurity specialist is accused of a hacker attack on a crypto-country and abduction of cryptocurrencies worth about $9 million. Apparently, the White hacker became black, but played out his law-abiding role to the very end.
Yesterday, the prosecutor’s office of the Southern District of New York made accusations 34-year-old Shakib Ahmed, a former senior security engineer at the International Technological Company, in the theft and laundering of funds in especially large sizes.
The specialist’s resume reflects skills, among other things, the reverse development of smart contracts and blockchain audit, which are very specialized and could be used by Ahmed in malicious activity.
The documents of the Ministry of Justice do not specify exactly where Ahmed worked; however, in his Linkedin profile, Amazon is indicated as the place of work. Amazon representatives confirmed the information for official media requests but said that Ahmed no longer works at the company.
Although the prosecutors did not specify which exchange became the victim of the attack, the news website about Coindesk cryptocurrency reported that the description and date of the attack correspond to the attack on Crema Finance, the SOLANA exchange, which occurred in early July 2022. It is these dates that appear in the charges of a former security specialist Amazon.
It is reported that after the abduction of a cryptocurrency in the amount of $9 million, the hacker returned most to the cryptocurrency as a result of a certain agreement. In particular, Ahmed suggested leaving “only” 1.5 million for “the provision of pentest services and return the remaining 7.5 million to the exchange if it agrees not to transmit information about the attack by law enforcement agencies.
This is a very common practice in the world of cryptoprotection. Hackers often negotiate with representatives of the crypto-streak about such things, and the representatives of such platforms are driven into a corner, as a rule, have nowhere to go, and they go to the conditions of hackers. However, as this case clearly demonstrates, the return of part of the cryptocurrency does not mean at all that the attacked company will not