Transit Swap Hacker Returns Assets

By Colin McNamara

Published in Technology

October 06, 2022

1 min read

The Transit Swap Exchange hack - What’s Happening

A group of security firms located the perpetrator behind a $28.9 million hack against a cryptocurrency trading platform called Transit Swap. According to the report, the hackers stole around $20 million worth of ether ($28.8 million USD) from the platform.

According to a blog post published Monday, the attacker used a loophole in the platform’s smart contracts to steal the money. The exploit allowed the hacker to take control of a large number of accounts’ wallets and withdraw the tokens.

Security firm Chainalysis helped track down the hacker’s IP address, while another security firm, HackerOne, helped identify the hacker’s identity. The hacker claimed responsibility for the attack. HackerOne CEO Tod Beardsley told CoinDesk that he believes the attack could have been much more significant, saying:

“We believe there is a lot more ETH to be recovered. We think it’s likely the hacker did not spend the entire amount stolen. They probably spent some portion of that on personal expenses like rent and food.” In addition to finding the hacker’s location, the security firms were able to determine how many times the hacker accessed the account. This information was key to determining whether the hacker acted alone or if others were involved.

According to the report, the hacker accessed the accounts between July 24 and Aug 2. While the hacker accessed the accounts multiple times, the hacker withdrew just over half of the total stolen funds.