- Last week’s Twitter hack could have seen more money lost the ₿12 that was accrued by the scammers
- Exchanges managed to blacklist the addresses very quickly and prevent more money being sent
- Coinbase prevented $280,000 worth of Bitcoin from being sent by users
Last week’s Twitter hack could have been more costly had it not been for cryptocurrency exchanges acting quickly to blacklist the scammers’ addresses, with Coinbase alone preventing 30.4 bitcoin from finding its way to the scammers. As the fallout of the Twitter hack continues, with the consensus seeming to be that it was carried out by a group of inexperienced hackers way out of their league, exchanges have revealed the steps they took to minimize the losses from their users.
Twitter Hack Takings Reduced Thanks to Exchanges
The Twitter hack, which saw the accounts of high profile individuals and large companies taken over and used to perpetrate the classic ‘send us crypto and we’ll send you more back’, resulted a ₿12 haul for the scammers, but cryptocurrency chiefs have revealed that it could have been much higher.
Philip Martin, Coinbase’s Chief Information Security Officer, told Forbes that the exchange took action on the Twitter hack “within about a minute of the Gemini and Binance tweets”, blocking users from sending funds to the address the scammers posted in their tweets. Martin states that Coinbase, which has some 35 million users worldwide, prevented just over 1,100 customers from sending a combined 30.4 bitcoin to the scammers, worth almost $280,000.
Martin told Forbes that a “vanishingly small group of Coinbase users…tried to send bitcoin to the scam address”, with only 14 users sending funds totaling around $3,000 before the block kicked in. Other exchanges, including Gemini, Kraken, and Binance also acted to stop users sending funds to the scammers, all of which reduced the haul the architects of the Twitter hack managed to get away with.
Wasabi Defends Itself, Then Removes Post
Wasabi Wallet, the Bitcoin mixing service to which some of the scammed funds were sent, published and then removed a blog post today in which they sought to deflect attention away from their obfuscation services by asking why more questions weren’t being asked of offshore banking companies who help hide billionaires’ wealth rather than the focus being on their practices.
The post also stated that its services only make headlines when used to launder illicitly-obtained funds such as in the Twitter hack case, whereas they believe that the wallet provides a valuable service in retaining privacy for all. Wasabi did not give a reason for removing the post.
