LuBian Mining Pool, once controlling 6% of BTC’s hash rate, was hacked in Dec 2020, losing $3.5B in Bitcoin. Arkham’s latest report shows the attacker used a brute-force attack on weak private keys to execute the theft.

In a shocking revelation, blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence has uncovered the largest Bitcoin theft in history — a 127,426 BTC hack from LuBian Mining Pool that went undetected for nearly five years.

The heist took place in December 2020, when LuBian controlled about 6% of Bitcoin’s total hash rate. At the time, the stolen BTC was worth $3.5 billion. Today, that amount has ballooned to a staggering $14.5 billion, making it the biggest crypto heist ever by current valuations.

According to Arkham, the breach was likely due to weak private key generation, which made LuBian’s wallets vulnerable to brute-force attacks. The hacker drained more than 90% of LuBian’s holdings, yet neither LuBian nor the attacker ever publicly acknowledged the incident.

In an unusual twist, LuBian attempted to communicate with the hacker by embedding over 1,500 messages on the Bitcoin blockchain (OP_RETURN transactions), pleading for the return of their stolen funds. Despite these efforts, the hacker has kept the stolen BTC largely dormant, with the last major movement being in July 2024.

As of today, the hacker’s wallet is ranked as the 13th largest BTC holder tracked by Arkham. Both the hacker and LuBian still control their respective balances, but no identities have been disclosed.

This massive breach exposes serious flaws in early mining infrastructure security. The silent nature of the theft raises alarming questions about how many other such undetected mega-hacks might exist in the crypto world.

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Do you think the hacker will ever return the $14.5B in stolen Bitcoin? Or will this become the most legendary unsolved crypto heist?

#Bitcoin #CryptoHack #Arkham #LuBian #BlockchainSecurity #BTCTheft