THELOGICALINDIAN - Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morganhave been answerable with cabal to acquit funds angry to the 2024 Bitfinex hack
U.S. authorities accept confiscated $3.6 billion from Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan in the better asset access in history. However, the aberrant personalities of the suspects accept larboard abounding apprehensive if the brace absolutely are the ones amenable for hacking Bitfinex aback in 2024.
Who Are the Alleged Bitfinex Hackers?
When the U.S. Department of Justice arrested two suspects and confiscated $3.6 billion account of cryptocurrencies Tuesday morning, the apple was acquisitive to apprentice the identities of the declared thieves. Onlookers apparently absurd the quintessential adumbral hackers: pasty, reclusive, and antisocial. So it came as a big abruptness back authorities appear they had taken Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan into custody, a acknowledged ability brace active in New York with a affection for camp behavior and a ancillary hustle authoritative abecedarian rap videos.
Media pundits bound appear the pair’s highly-cultivated and bright online presence, acclaim through YouTube videos, Tik Tok videos, and alike Morgan’s op-eds as a above Forbes columnist. Morgan, 31, is declared in her Forbes bio as “an able in persuasion, amusing engineering, and bold theory.” In her rap videos, area she performs beneath the alias Razzlekhan, she calls herself “the crocodile of Wall street.” Other hijinks she’s aggregate on amusing media accommodate bistro and bubbler with her feet, answer how she congenital a multimillion-dollar business with “zero alfresco funding,” and lots and lots of dancing and rapping.
Outside of managing her online persona, Morgan has run talks blue-blooded “How to Amusing Engineer Your Way Into ANYTHING” to arranged audiences in New York Salons. In the talks, she explains how amusing engineering is about base peoples cerebral biases and “triggering bodies to do what they’re already programmed to do.” She appears to accept a able bent for her cast of amusing engineering, and gives several examples of how she’s acclimated it in her circadian life.
Lichtenstein, 34, presents a added ashore angel online. In his Twitter bio, he describes himself as a “human angel investor, web3 developer, and consecutive entrepreneur.” He additionally has a able abstruse background, cofounding MixRank, a Y-Combinator-backed startup that helps companies assay business abstracts about barter and competitors. However, he additionally stars in abounding of Morgan’s online antics, dancing about dressed in a Viking helmet and administration his opinions on Keto diet auto cookies.
The brace are far from what abounding bodies accepted in a brace of multi-billion-dollar hackers. Some accept appropriate that Lichtenstein and Morgan are alone accomplices or “fall guys” for the absolute hacker who is yet to be caught. Others accept that the brace are absolutely responsible, citation Morgan’s amusing engineering accomplishment and the pair’s abstruse backgrounds as affirmation that they are able of the heist. As no official post-mortem on the 2024 Bitfinex drudge was anytime released, it’s cryptic how the exchange’s wallets were compromised.
Crypto Briefing looked into the accessible facts and affirmation surrounding the brace and the bent accuse levied adjoin them. Join us as we appraise how acceptable it is that Lichtenstein and Morgan are the bent masterminds abaft the Bitfinex hack.
Were Lichtenstein and Morgan Behind the Hack?
Despite Lichtenstein and Morgan’s aberrant personas and about internet celebrity, the brace arise to accept the ability bare drudge Bitfinex. Lichtenstein’s abstruse accomplishments in coding and abstracts assay acceptable provided him with abounding of the abilities all-important to able into the crypto exchange, added so aback in 2024 back aegis standards were beneath rigorous.
Additionally, Morgan is a self-proclaimed cybercrime expert, with her Linkedin profile claiming she is “currently focused on architecture software that combats the aggressive access in artifice and cybercrime.” With high-level ability on how to adverse cybercrime, it’s not extraordinary that Morgan would acquire ability of how to bypass Bitfinex’s defenses.
More shockingly, Morgan appears to accept access with BitGo, the wallet band-aid provider for Bitfinex at the time of the 2016 hack. In a 2020 Forbes article, Morgan discussed means to assure businesses and audience from cyber abyss with BitGo’s Chief Compliance Officer, Matt Parrella. While Parrella alone captivated his position as BitGo amid July 2019 and November 2020, the actuality that Morgan was in acquaintance with BitGo advisers and apparent as an ascendancy on cyber aegis afterwards the Bitfinex drudge took abode raises several red flags.
Morgan’s adulation for amusing engineering could additionally agency into her captivation in the Bitfinex hack. Suppose Morgan had admission to, or was in acquaintance with Bitfinex or BitGo advisers above-mentioned to the hack. In that case, she could accept acclimated her amusing engineering techniques to accretion admission to clandestine or acute advice that aided the heist, if she and Lichtenstein were absolutely involved.
However, while affirmation suggests that the brace had the adequacy to cull off the Bitfinex hack, it doesn’t beggarly they were the ones responsible. Court documents appear Tuesday accommodate added acumen into the pair’s money bed-making activities, and acknowledge some awkward mistakes that are accidental of declared multi-billion dollar hackers.
The best accessible affirmation adjoin Lichtenstein and Morgan’s captivation in the antecedent annexation of funds from Bitfinex is that the Department of Justice has not yet answerable them with such a crime. The two accuse currently brought adjoin the brace are cabal to accomplish money bed-making and cabal to bamboozle the U.S. If authorities had affirmation to advance Lichtenstein and Morgan were abaft the Bitfinex hack, there would acceptable be an added allegation of Grand Larceny in the aboriginal degree.
Furthermore, the aforementioned abstracts appear that Lichtenstein had kept the clandestine keys to the wallets absolute the baseborn cryptocurrency unencrypted on a billow accumulator service. It seems aberrant that a self-professed cybersecurity able and abstracts analyst would accept such poor operation aegis for wallets absolute ample amounts of baseborn cryptocurrency.
Authorities connected email addresses acclimated by Lichtenstein and Morgan on an Indian crypto barter to a Bitcoin abode angry to the baseborn funds. Law administration again got a accreditation to admission Lichtenstein’s billow abstracts account, bound absolute him to be in control of addresses absolute the baseborn funds. If Lichtenstein hadn’t fabricated the aberration of signing up for his billow accumulator annual application the aforementioned character as he acclimated for the Indian exchange, it is acceptable he and Morgan would accept evaded detection.
A final point adjoin Lichtenstein and Morgan’s captivation in the drudge is how the brace were cashing out their ill-gotten gains. The brace had used Walmart allowance cards, Uber, Hotels.com, and the PlayStation abundance to banknote out baby amounts of their fortune, in accession to abandoning funds from Bitcoin ATMs about New York to acquirement gold bullion. Overall, the all-inclusive majority of Lichtenstein and Morgan’s abundance was aloof to them. It afresh makes little faculty that the brace would go to abundant lengths to abduct so abundant cryptocurrency after accepting a applicable plan to banknote it all out.
Further developments in the case will acceptable afford added ablaze on the bearings and acknowledge if Lichtenstein and Morgan’s arrests were allotment of a wider, added adult operation. The one affair that seems bright is to apprehend the unexpected—just because the bearings is already absurd, it doesn’t beggarly the accuracy can’t about-face out to be alike wilder.
Disclosure: At the time of autograph this feature, the columnist endemic ETH and several added cryptocurrencies.
