Bitmain Sues ‘Unknown Hacker’ Over 5.5 Million Heists

Bitmain, a Chinese based crypto mining giant, has reportedly filed a lawsuit over a heist of 5.5 million dollars. As per the suit, the heist went down on April and hacker, “John Doe” caused severe damages in millions of dollars by manipulating the Binance account on Bitmain. The lawsuit was filed with US District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle on Nov. 7.

As per stated court documents, the said hacker got hold of Bitmain Finance account, from where he manipulated the price. The hacker supposedly made use of all the stored Bitcoins in the report and then managed the price for Bitcoin Decentral And (MANA) and got away with the profits.

Also Read: Bitmain to invest heavily in EOS

In other assessments, it was found out, the hacker caused a loss of around $5.5 million in monetary terms, and the total number of Bitcoins stolen came around 615. The heist took place on April 22, when BTC was trading at $8,935.

How the Heist took Place

The hackers used two of the company’s account. One of the account was on Binance, the second largest Crypto exchange, and another one on Bittrex. The hacker first got hold of 2.2 million MANA from the Bittrex and then placed an order to buy this MANA on Bittrex digital wallet. The reason being Bitmain’s BTC value at that time was quite high than the average Crypto Exchanges. The accused than also inflated the price of MANA buy using the Bitcoin to buy Ethereum (ETH).

Also Read: Binance and Bittrex Cut Ties With Iran

The hacker then further carried out his Ponzi scheme in many orchestrated transactions, where he used BTC from the exchange’s digital wallet to buy MANA and then completed the heist by transferring the BTC from the Bitmain’s wallet to Brittex Digital Currency Wallet. The losses caused by this digital theft in 2017 have crossed the $950 million mark.