The hackers reportedly compromised the PGP key to gain access to Dashjr's Bitcoin wallet.
Luke Dashjr, software developer and one of the core developers of Bitcoin (BTC), has been hacked and reportedly lost “basically” all of his Bitcoin (BTC) holdings.
According to the Twitter thread shared on January 1st, the developer’s PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) key, an encryption system used as a security method to protect the information, was compromised.
Did you know?
Want to get smarter & wealthier with crypto?
Subscribe - We publish new crypto explainer videos every week!
Harmony ONE Explained (Beginner-Friendly Animation)
In a Twitter thread, Dashjr shared a Bitcoin wallet address where, according to him, stolen Bitcoin (BTC) was transferred. It is worth noting that Dashjr did not provide the exact amount of BTC stolen.
At the time of writing, the wallet named by Dashjr shows five transactions. One was made on January 2nd, and the other four were made on December 31st, between 2:08 PM to 2:16 PM. The wallet contains 216.93 BTC, worth around $3.6 million.
Dashjr claims he has “no idea how” the malicious actor managed to access his key. However, some users pointed out that, on November 17th, Dashjr revealed that his server was compromised by “new malware/backdoors on the system.”
On top of that, the man claimed that he found out about the hack through Coinbase and Kraken emails alerting him about recent login attempts.
In response to Luke Dashjr’s tweet, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao offered his help by stating:
Sorry to see you lose so much. Informed our security team to monitor. If it comes our way, we will freeze it. If there is anything else we can help with, please let us know. We deal with these often, and have Law Enforcement (LE) relationships worldwide.
After the news broke, the crypto community started speculating on various reasons why the hack may have happened. One Reddit user, dubbed SatStandard, claimed that Dashjr should blame lack of security for this hack, as a man has allegedly had his “hot wallet on the same computer he did everything else.”