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FTX Exploiter Swaps Thousands of Stolen BNB Crypto Tokens Into Ether, BUSD
The attacker appears to convert the illicitly gained funds around the same time every day.
Updated Nov 17, 2022, 10:44 a.m. Published Nov 17, 2022, 10:44 a.m.
Whoever was behind last week’s $600 million exploit of crypto exchange FTX converted over about $7.4 million worth of BNB tokens into ether and binance USD (BUSD), a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, on Thursday.
Some 10,000 BNB tokens were converted into 2,000 ether, worth over $2.4 million at current rates, and a total of 19,714 BNB became $5 million of BUSD over two transactions. The BNB and BUSD tokens form the backbone of BNB Chain, a blockchain network closely related to the crypto exchange Binance.
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It is not clear why the attacker is swapping the stolen funds and choosing to convert them to ether and BUSD specifically. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The attacker, who carried the first conversion on Tuesday, seems to carry out the conversions at roughly the same time of day. The transactions on Tuesday and Wednesday occurred between 09:00 UTC and 11:00 UTC, as did today's.
#PeckShieldAlert FTX Accounts Drainer has swapped 10,000 $BNB ($2,682,185.99) on BSC to 2,001.5 $ETH ($2,400,603.74) pic.twitter.com/tHPgWKhXf2
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) November 17, 2022
The funds were siphoned from FTX's crypto wallets late Friday last week. Soon after, the exchange said on its official Telegram channel that it had been compromised, instructing users not to install any new upgrades and to delete all FTX apps.
Multiple addresses connected to the accounts drainer started moving funds on Tuesday, swapping it to over 34,000 ether. The address now holds more than 290,000 ether and is currently the 34th-largest owner of the cryptocurrency.
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