Developer of Munchables, linked to DPRK, pilfers $62.5m from protocol before returning it
An alleged member of the Munchables team, believed to have ties to North Korea, has reportedly stolen more than $60 million in cryptocurrency from the project. However, the stolen funds were unexpectedly returned after the individual’s identity was exposed.
On March 27, Munchables, a gaming protocol based in Blast, experienced a significant hack, resulting in a loss of over $62.5 million worth of Ethereum (ETH).
The Munchables team has acknowledged the potential involvement of one of their members in a post on X platform.
In a now-deleted Telegram post, blockchain investigator ZachXBT shared an address linked to the hacker, revealing that the attacker is a “DPRK IT Worker.” Shortly after this information came to light, Dan, a coder from Pixelcraft Studios, disclosed that his team had engaged in discussions with the hacker in 2022 for game development purposes. Dan also mentioned that they had suspicions about the individual’s potential connection to North Korean hackers.
Following the revelation of the attacker’s identity, blockchain analytics identified multiple addresses associated with the hacker, some of which had connections to centralized exchanges like Binance, MEXC, and ChangeNOW.
After the hacker’s identity was made public and a series of on-chain investigations took place, the perpetrator decided to return all the stolen funds. The Munchables team confirmed that the attacker agreed to return the funds without any conditions. They also stated that the responsible individual had provided all the necessary private keys to assist in recovering the users’ funds.
Munchables is a relatively new decentralized finance (gamefi) application focused on gaming, operating on the Ethereum layer-2 network, Blast. It allows players to access in-game items in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) through crypto staking.
Read More:
Data shows that North Korea has set a new record for the number of cryptocurrency hacks in 2023.
The UN states that weak security measures in the crypto industry result in North Korea receiving 50% of foreign earnings.
Follow us on Google News.
