A cryptocurrency investor lost over $282 million in Bitcoin and Litecoin after falling victim to a social engineering scam involving hardware wallets.
On January 16th, on- chain investigator ZachXBT revealed a major theft that allegedly drained a victim's account of 2.05 million Litecoin (LTC) and 1,459 Bitcoin (BTC).
Monero surged 36% after hackers swapped stolen cryptocurrency for their own private coin.
Cybersecurity firm ZeroShadow confirmed that the attacker carried out the theft by impersonating Trezor's customer support department. Trezor is a major hardware wallet provider with over 2 million users.
The imposters successfully manipulated the victims into revealing their recovery seed phrase, effectively transferring full control of the assets.
Following the breach, the perpetrator immediately began laundering the stolen money.
ZachXBT reports that the attacker used multiple instant exchanges, specifically THORChain, to connect the stolen Bitcoin to Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin.
Meanwhile, the attacker's reliance on THORChain has drawn sharp criticism of the decentralized infrastructure provider.
ZachXBT noted that this is not the first time bad actors have exploited the platform for such purposes. This suggests that it remains a favorite destination for criminals seeking to move stolen assets.
At the same time, the hackers converted a significant portion of the loot into Monero (XMR), a privacy-focused token designed to hide transaction details.
“ZeroShadow tracked outflows and froze over $1 million before it could be converted into XMR. The operation that may have passed has the potential to increase the price of XMR,” ZeroShadow stated .
Notably, this strong buying spree triggered a significant price increase in the Monero market .
Data from BeinCrypto shows the token surged over 36% in a seven-day period, reaching a high of nearly $800. The asset has since corrected downwards to around $621 as of the time of writing.
This incident highlights a growing security crisis in the digital asset sector. Attackers are shifting tactics, prioritizing social engineering scams and brand impersonation over exploiting technical code to deceive victims.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has quantified the trend, reportinga 1,400% year-on-year increase in impersonation scams . The company also stated that the Medium financial loss per incident has increased by over 600%.
