Neither LuBian nor the hackers have publicly acknowledged the attack so far.
LuBian was one of the world's largest Bitcoin mining pools in 2020. As of May 2020, its computing power accounted for nearly 6% of the total Bitcoin network computing power.
Each hacker address received a transaction with an OP_RETURN message (as shown in the screenshot), in which LuBian requested the hacker to return the stolen funds. To send these messages, LuBian initiated 1516 transactions, consuming a total of about 1.4 bitcoins. This suggests that these messages are likely to have come from LuBian himself, rather than some other hacker impersonating someone who cracked the private key by brute force.
It seems that the private key generation algorithm used by LuBian at the time was at risk of being brute-force cracked, and this may be the vulnerability that the hacker exploited.
Currently, LuBian still has 11,886 bitcoins (currently worth about 13.5 The largest crypto heist ever
Meanwhile, the hacker still holds the stolen Bitcoin, with the last known on-chain operation being a wallet merge in July 2024.
Based on the stolen assets valued at $3.5 billion at the time of the transfer, the LuBian hack was the largest cryptocurrency theft in history.
Due to the sharp rise in Bitcoin prices since 2020, the current market value of this batch of stolen assets has reached 14.5 billion US dollars, making the LuBian hacker the 13th largest Bitcoin holder in Arkham, surpassing the Mt. Gox hacker.
Tracking LuBian hacker address on Arkham:
https://intel.arkm.com/explorer/entity/lubian-hacker
Tracking LuBian mining pool on Arkham:
https://intel.arkm.com/explorer/entity/lubian-com
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