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A series of suspicious transactions on the BNB Chain resulted in the loss of about $80,000 worth of Bitcoin. Now, the crypto community is confused about the attacker's intentions. On-chain security firm Cyvers believes the exploit was due to the actions of a white hat hacker. Celebrities like rappers Soul Ja Boy and Rich The Kid also had their hands full after their social media accounts were ‘compromised’ to promote fake meme coins. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice in South Korea launched a task force to combat the rising number of crypto crimes.
$80K Bitcoin Exploit on BNB Chain
Approximately $80,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) was lost in a potential exploit on the BNB Chain involving multiple suspicious transactions. While $80,000 is still a relatively small amount compared to typical crypto exploits, the incident has raised some questions about the attacker's actual intentions.
The exploited token contract is still unknown, but it is possible that the attacker could be a white hat hacker using their skills to find security vulnerabilities, according to on-chain security firm Cyvers. The firm pointed out in a May 28 X post that the attacker received funding through TornadoCash and interacted with the Binance exchange, which could suggest possible white hat action.
Despite using the notorious crypto mixing service Tornado Cash, the exploiter's interaction with Binance is not in the usual modus operandi for sophisticated crypto hackers with malicious intent. These hackers also typically avoid large centralized exchanges like Binance because of very strict KYC verification requirements that could reveal their identities.
What is a White Hat Hacker?
A white hat hacker is a person who uses their hacking skills to identify security vulnerabilities in hardware, software, or networks. Unlike malicious hackers, or black hat hackers, white hat hackers stick to the law and ethical guidelines while conducting their activities. Many white hat hackers have a background as former black hat hackers.
White hat hackers only look for vulnerabilities or exploits when they have legal permission to do so. They often research open-source software, their own systems, or products and services that operate bug bounty programs, which reward them for pointing out security flaws. The main goal of white hat hackers is to find and report vulnerabilities so they can be fixed before being exploited by malicious actors.
In contrast to white hat hackers, black hat hackers discover and exploit vulnerabilities for their own personal gain, and they often sell this information to the highest bidder.
Gray hat hackers fall somewhere in between, as they sometimes access systems without permission but typically with less harmful intentions than black hat hackers. For example, in 2018, a gray hat hacker in Russia exploited a vulnerability in MikroTik routers to patch them against black hat attacks. The hacker still gained unauthorized access, but had the intention of protecting the devices from becoming part of a crypto mining botnet.
Celebrity Crypto Accounts Compromised
Meanwhile, some ‘celebrities’ have had their hands full with their social media accounts being hacked over the past few days. On the other hand, Roxo, a member of the X crypto community, suggested that the recent X account issues of celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner, rappers Soul Ja Boy and Rich The Kid, and adult-content models Kazumi and Ivana Knöll were not due to hacking but social engineering by a person named Sahil.
Roxo posted his findings about the suspicious tweets over the weekend of May 25-26. He claimed Jenner's team was misled by Sahil, while the other celebrities were targeted for financial scams.
Roxo shared a Telegram post and some pictures from Sahil Arora's account, including one with Rich The Kid. He pointed out that the coins launched on pump.fun for Soul Ja Boy, Rich The Kid, Kazumi, and Knöll were linked to Arora’s wallet address. Jenner’s JENNER coin, however, was legitimate, and her team was very confused by the situation. Roxo also referred to a now-deleted tweet from Jenner’s account asking followers to send meme coins to Arora’s address.
Jenner’s team has since clarified that an ad for a third-party token caused confusion and was removed. Jenner’s manager, Sophia Hutchins, also confirmed that the JENNER coin was genuine and that the account was not hacked. Arora responded to this on X and ended up accusing Jenner's team of abandoning him and acting naively.
Roxo accused Sahil of orchestrating five influencer scams in a week, a claim that is supported by a post from Rich The Kid. The rapper stated his account was hacked, and a coin promoted by Sahil led to a pump and dump scheme that funneled money into Sahil's account before he blocked Rich The Kid.
Another potential scam involved crypto investor Gigantic-Cassocked-Rebirth, who also claimed that his account was hacked in a now-deleted post.
Caitlyn Jenner Speaks Out
Despite the controversy surrounding the JENNER token at the moment, its market cap initially rose to $43 million in just 24 hours after its launch. However, it later fell by 52.8% to $20.3 million, according to DEX Screener.
Caitlyn Jenner has certainly not given up on the token either and confirmed her commitment by stating that it will continue to rise now that Arora is no longer involved. The former Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete also doubts that Arora will be able to launch any more celebrity tokens in the future considering the current backlash against the scammer.
The crypto community, however, is still rather skeptical about whether the posts are genuinely from Jenner.
South Korea Tackles Crypto Crime
South Korea is making its own plans to combat crypto crimes. South Korea’s Ministry of Justice launched a special task force to fight against the rising number of crypto crimes. In fact, it seems like South Korea is getting ready for a massive crackdown on fraud and market manipulation in the crypto industry.
This task force was created in collaboration with local regulatory bodies, and will focus on cases of price manipulation, unregistered crypto exchanges, and deposit fraud, which have increasingly affected South Korean citizens.
According to a regulatory document, illegal activities involving cryptocurrency in South Korea have already surpassed $1.6 billion just under six months into the year. The task force plans to dismantle schemes promising high returns on crypto investments and is preparing to enforce the Virtual Asset User Protection Act, which is set to be implemented in July, to protect assets held by crypto users.
This proves South Korea is fully committed to creating a more transparent environment for crypto trading, despite the country lagging behind other regions in crypto adoption.
South Korean financial regulators are also under a lot of pressure to approve exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for cryptos after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) recent approval of spot Ethereum ETFs. Jung Eui-jung, head of the Korean Stockholders’ Alliance, believes it is very important to follow the U.S. example by also endorsing Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs.
