The Iran-based cryptocurrency exchange Nobitex has been hacked, losing over $80 million in digital assets, according to a social media post by researcher ZachXBT. But the issue is not over yet; this attack would have gone unnoticed if it weren't for the fact that the hackers who perpetrated it are "pro-Israel," sending a strong message as the war in the Middle East expands. How did this attack happen, and who are these hackers? Let's explore.
In the early hours of June 18, on-chain researcher ZachXBT posted on his official Telegram channel that the Iranian exchange “nobitex” had been victimized by #hackers , who stole funds totaling $81.7 million.
According to the researcher, the hacking group somehow managed to gain access to the cryptocurrency exchange's hot wallets and were able to withdraw various digital assets through the Tron network and blockchains compatible with the #Ethereum virtual machine (EVM).
Once the Exchange detected these unauthorized transactions, they proceeded to suspend all use of those wallets.
What's interesting and what's drawing attention in the community is that these hackers used "vanity addresses" to withdraw the digital assets. For general information, a "vanity address" is a user-defined sequence of specific characters. Simply put, it's an address that you can add any words you want.
And as you can see, they didn't miss the opportunity to draw attention and send strong messages through this fact.
What makes it even more interesting is that these addresses appear to be burn addresses, that is, addresses to which the hacker group has no access (they do not have the private keys), so in reality those $81.7 million dollars would technically be “burned.”
The perpetrators call themselves “Gonjeshkedarande,” a group of pro-Israeli hackers.
Following these events, the hacker group sent a message through social media, making strong accusations against the Nobitex exchange and its close ties to armed groups. It also urged its users to withdraw all their funds as soon as possible because it would publish internal files from the exchange.
Meanwhile, Nobitex states that all user funds are secure in its cold wallet, and that damages would be compensated to each affected user.
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