A&D Forensics Brief, April 28, 2023
A&D Forensics
Financial and Blockchain Intelligence Consulting, Blockchain Forensics, Crypto Investigations and Training Firm.
CommScope, a technology giant that designs and builds network infrastructure products for companies, hospitals, schools, and federal networks, was hit by a ransomware attack on March 27, allowing hackers to steal corporate and employee data from its systems. The stolen data includes troves of internal documents, technical drawings, invoices, corporate spending, and personal information of thousands of employees, and has caused widespread disruption across the company, making cybersecurity a crucial priority for firms to prevent such incidents.
Abubakar Malami, the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, took a harsh stance against House of Representatives members who were looking into claims that the country lost over $2.4 billion in revenue as a result of the allegedly illicit sale of 48 million barrels of crude oil to China in 2015.
Barbara and Ewan Atkins were duped by a conman who falsely claimed to be approved by Martin Lewis.? The scammer apparently persuaded the couple to invest in Bitcoin through a series of transactions on FinTech sites Revolut, Wise, and Binance.?
The scammer, posing as an investment manager, assisted the couple in opening accounts and bypassing fraud prevention procedures. The couple made 14 transactions ranging from ￡3,000 to ￡5,000, and their "investment" allegedly doubled in value in four weeks.?
When the couple went to withdraw their assets, they were told they had to pay ￡10,000 in capital gains tax, which made them realize they had been duped.
The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) of Hong Kong will issue recommendations on the cryptocurrency licensing framework in May. According to Julia Leung, CEO of the SFC in Hong Kong, there is an ongoing consultation process for the regulatory framework for crypto businesses in the city, and there have been more than 150 replies so far. The new regulatory framework will take effect on June 1, according to the agency. This would require cryptocurrency platforms to register with city officials.
Kraken is going to court to challenge the US Internal Revenue Service and its demand for vital exchange user information. According to the conversation, the IRS's request for consumer information is a "unjustified treasure hunt."
The cryptocurrency exchange has asked a federal court in San Francisco to intervene in the matter and order the IRS to back off.
CertiK has blamed the nearly $1.82 million loss experienced by MerlinDEX, a zkSync-based decentralized exchange, on a private key management issue rather than a bad actor exploit. CertiK audited MerlinDEX's smart contracts prior to the incident.
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The South Korean parliament’s National Policy Committee passed the first step of the country’s crypto bill, the Virtual Asset Investor Protection Act. The bill’s passing comes only weeks after South Korea’s parliament resolved to take additional steps to control the country’s crypto market.?
The Hydrogen Technology Corporation has been charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for "effectuating the unregistered offers and sales of crypto asset securities."
The Miami-based Hydrogen and its former CEO Michael Ross Kane allegedly produced the Hydro token beginning in January 2018 and then publicly disseminated it through a variety of strategies, including an airdrop, bounty schemes, employee incentives, and direct sales on trading platforms.
Ordinals Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that runs on Ethereum and enables users to lend and borrow inscriptions, engaged in an exit scam or "rug pull." The protocol's developer removed 256 million OFI tokens from its smart contracts using a "safuToken" function.
Three North Koreans were barred by the U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions watchdog for supporting the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacker group known for crypto thefts that American officials said were used to fund the country's weapons program.? According to the agency, three people were sanctioned: Sim Hyon Sop provided additional financial support, Cheng Hung Man and Wu Huihui were over-the-counter (OTC) dealers who enabled crypto transactions for Lazarus.
UniSat Wallet experienced a huge number of double-spend attacks just a few hours after the Bitcoin Ordinals open-source Chrome extension crashed. According to the firm, investigations are still ongoing, and 70 of the 383 total transactions have been recognized as affected. UniSat Wallet committed to compensate all affected users and began the reclaiming process via Discord.
On April 23, a $700,000 exploit was discovered in the FilDA Finance multi-chain crypto lending system. To take the cash, the hackers used the Elastos Smart Chain (ESC) and the REI Network. According to on-chain data provided in a blog post by FilDA, the hackers connected ELA tokens, ESC's native cryptocurrency, to Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Ethereum, and then to the prominent crypto mixer, Tornado Cash.
KuCoin, a cryptocurrency exchange and bitcoin (BTC) trading platform, has been targeted by unscrupulous actors via its Twitter account.The exchange has reported that its Twitter account has been hacked. The exchange claims it worked quickly to retake control of its @kucoincom Twitter handle. However, the bad actors were able to take the assets of some KuCoin users via fraudulent activity posted on the platform during the hijacking.