Bitcoin · Lombard Finance · Bitcoin Magazine
Alleged White-Hat Hackers Withdraw 4,000 bitcoin from Blockstream’s Liquid Network Federation Reserves
Compiled by KHAO Editorial — aggregated from 2 sources. See llms.txt for citation guidance.
◎ Multiple-sources
The Liquid Network said Sunday that purported white-hat hackers withdrew about 4,000 bitcoin, worth about $320 million, from the federation wallet that backs L-BTC.
Key facts
- The Liquid Network said Sunday that purported white-hat hackers withdrew about 4,000 bitcoin, worth about $320 million, from the federation wallet that backs L-BTC
- Before the hack, the treasury held over 4200 BTC; after the hack, Blockstream’s proof of reserves page reports a little over 207 BTC left
- The hackers withdrew 4,019.4 BTC from the reserve address in a peg-out transaction using the SideSwap Peg-out Authorization Key
- Because the transaction appeared as valid, given the consensus bug, the federation members’ HSM security servers signed the BTC withdrawal transaction, worth roughly 320 million at the time
Summary
The Liquid Network is a federated sidechain of Bitcoin, founded by Adam Back’s Blockstream. The hackers withdrew 4,019.4 BTC from the reserve address in a peg-out transaction using the SideSwap Peg-out Authorization Key. The hacker moved the funds to an address ending in 6gyqjlte, from which they quickly signed a new transaction with a message on the OP_RETURN arbitrary data field saying “we are whitehats. contact us on chain.” Those coins were still at that address at the time of writing. A small mainnet transaction to the hacker address followed by an OP_RETURN saying “Please contact ”, presumably from a Blockstream public address, though that remains unconfirmed.