An unknown attacker stole over 200 BTC from a Bitcoin Core developer

Luke Dash, Bitcoin Core Developer, shared sad news to his twitter readers: he lost 216.9 BTC (approximately $3.6 million). An unknown criminal used a compromised private key.

Transactions were made on December 31st.

Looks like some of it is coinjoined to 1YAR6opJCfDjBNdn5bV8b5Mcu84tv92fa

— @[email protected] on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) January 1, 2023

The developer could not really explain how he lost the funds, and when asked why he noticed the loss of funds so late, he admitted that he only found out about the hack after receiving letters from Coinbase and Kraken – someone tried to log into the system.

The crypto community sharply reacted negatively to Dash’s story – if the developer of Bitcoin Core, who is known for talking about security, can lose his funds so easily, then what can we say about ordinary people. Those who have never encountered crypto may get scared, and this, in turn, will slow down the spread of the first cryptocurrency. After all, there is no chance that they will be able to take care of their funds on their own.

You’ve definitely been one of the most security conscious folks I’ve known in this space, so this is a little shocking. I’m not sure many would be able to have useful insight, unfortunately.

If this can happen to you, there’s little hope for most people, sadly.

— Jason Hughes (@wk057) January 1, 2023

Changpeng Zhao, head of the largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance offered your help. He wrote that the security service of the exchange was warned about the need for monitoring, and if Binance can help with something else, then you can always contact him. The exchange cooperates with law enforcement agencies around the world and can be useful.

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.

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) January 1, 2023

After the resounding collapse of the popular FTX trading platform, many cryptocurrency holders began to opt for self-custody. Alas, this decision also has a downside, because if the money is not on exchange wallets, then the owners of the crypt themselves deal with security issues. And even the most competent of them, as it turned out, are completely unprepared to protect their funds.

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