Unique theft in Iran-Israel war, Israeli hackers stole and ‘burned’ cryptocurrency worth Rs 8000000000
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The war between Iran and Israel has now moved towards economic loss digitally. An Israeli hacking group called Predatory Sparrow has claimed to have stolen more than $90 million (about Rs 800 crore) from Iran’s largest crypto exchange Nobitex. This group is also known as Gonjeshke Darande. According to the report, they destroyed the money instead of keeping it. Their aim was to send a political message.
According to Fortune, hackers linked to Israel attacked the Iranian crypto exchange. This attack has taken place at a time of increasing tension between Iran and Israel. Hackers wrote in a post on the social media platform X, ‘These cyber attacks have been carried out because Nobitex has become a major regime tool for providing financial support to terrorism and violating sanctions.’ After the hack, Nobitex wrote on its X account that most of the currencies are safe in cold wallets and have not been affected by this attack.
All the money was destroyed
The hackers did not keep a single penny. Crypto analytics firm Elliptic reported that Predatory Sparrow stole $90 million worth of Bitcoin, Dogecoin and more than 100 different cryptocurrencies. But instead of cashing out these funds, they destroyed them. In crypto language, this is called ‘burning’. According to the report, they wanted to send a political message.
According to Fortune, blockchain addresses or places in the database that record who has how much money. These are usually created randomly. They contain a tangled sequence of numbers and letters. But for this operation, Predatory Sparrow sent the hacked funds to addresses that contained the phrase ‘F-iRGCTerrorists’. IRGC stands for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian military.
Powerful computers used!
Arda Akartuna, lead crypto threat researcher at Elliptic, explained in the report that generating so many addresses with such special words would require so much computing power that it would not be possible in any normal lifetime. Akartuna also said that it appears to have been a symbolic hack, not one that had the intention of gaining economic gain.
