Hackers have made off with billions of dollars in virtual assets in the past year by compromising some of the cryptocurrency exchanges that have emerged during the bitcoin boom.
The problem is exacerbated because many cryptocurrency projects, intent on avoiding government regulations, set up in countries whose law enforcement agencies don’t have much power to go after transnational hackers. Or if they are hacked, they tend to be less likely to call for government help on ideological grounds, said Beth Bisbee, head of U.S. investigations at Chainalysis, a company that tracks cryptocurrency transactions for both private companies and government agencies.
Some developers “want to be anti-bank and anti-oversight,” Bisbee said. “So when something like that happens, they’re not necessarily wanting to work with law enforcement, even though they’d be considered to be a victim and it’d be valuable for them to.”While exchange hacks offer some similarities to the bank heists of old, they don’t leave behind the hallmarks that once made them front-page news. Public scrutiny of these hacks can be lacking despite the large dollar amounts.
But some hacks do have happy endings. In one bizarre, public case, a hacker stole $600 million from the cryptocurrency platform Poly Network. Instead of blaming the thief, the company decided to appeal to his better nature, calling him “Mr. White Hat,” which is a cybersecurity term for a researcher working to help make things more secure. Poly Network thanked him for exposing a flaw in its code and asked for the money back. The hacker eventually relented andBut those instances are rare.
Claire Georges, the deputy spokesperson for Europol, the European Union’s international law enforcement agency, said the agency is aware of a number of cases against hackers who steal digital assets. But she said building a solid case is a long, slow process that doesn’t keep up with the pace of attacks.
“We have a number of investigations going as we speak,” Georges said. “They take a long time, because we also would want to take down the whole criminal network,” she said. “These cases often feed into other cases.”
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