Luke Dashjr, Bitcoin core developer and Original Gangster (OG) recently stated that his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) key was “compromised” and a significant amount of his BTC was stolen.
Dahjr’ PGP compromised
The BTC hack happened on New Year’s eve. Dashjr posted on his official Twitter account noting that hackers illegally obtained his PGP key. PGP is a common security procedure that uses the public key system in which every individual user has a unique encryption key known publicly along with a private key only known by the user.
PSA: My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen. I have no idea how. Help please. #Bitcoin
— @[email protected] on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) January 1, 2023
In a long Twitter thread, Luke shared his wallet address a few hours ago, confirming the BTC hack. However, the exact numbers aren’t disclosed yet. He showed his bottled rage in another tweet: “Not going to spend time thinking on that unless the thief offers to make a deal. Without a deal, I will not stop until he’s in jail or dead.”
432ded946431a9612f09d73bd15ded045d11d1095ffdfe8d68306ea9b2e78930
— @[email protected] on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) January 1, 2023
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4b3cde50e2bce3d02e15b61957d2452e29f53d9a99e1ab14e83b6ec0f87fd851
50df1eab0bf2bd01999cea4fc531a65c17e1a285823c9ae4eab0feb7e21a11b6
As per media reports, almost 216.93 BTC are missing— worth nearly $3.61 million at the time of writing, combining the four transactions that occurred between 2:08 and 2:16 p.m. (UTC) on December 31st, 2022. When a user asked him to share some insights of what really happened, he replied that he had “no idea.”
Another user interrupted, questioning about “What PGP has to do with anything?” Luke replied: “That’s how you might verify that your Bitcoin Knots or Core download isn’t infested with malware. So to be clear: DO NOT DOWNLOAD BITCOIN KNOTS AND TRUST IT UNTIL THIS IS RESOLVED. If you already did in the last few months, consider shutting that system down for now.”
According to news reports, Dashjr discussed that a PGP key is used to verify Bitcoin Knots. Bitcoin Knots is a full Bitcoin client and builds the backbone of the network. It facilitates high security, stability and privacy.
According to The Guardian, Allinvain was the “first person” that was affected by a BTC hack. Almost 25,000 BTC were stolen from his wallet after his windows system was hacked, back in June 2011. At that time, the stolen funds totaled more than $500,000.
Series of suspected events
On November 17th, 2022, Dashjr posted on Twitter about the “confirmed presence of new malware/backdoors on the system, no evidence yet that it was used for anything, but be extra careful.” He informed afterwards that “Further investigation is suggesting this is not a bog standard trojan, but something created specifically for compromising my server.”
Completed first round of analysis.
— @[email protected] on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) November 17, 2022
Evidence suggests the attacker installed 2-3 remote shell backdoors, but didn't touch anything else.
Moving forward with an even more extreme check, but given what I've seen so far, I don't expect it to turn up anything more.
A user named Arnav Gupta sarcastically questioned Luke of stolen BTC from his self-custody and then asking FBI for help. Dashjr responded that: “ “code is law” is an Ethereum scamphrase, FBI should do their job, hunt down the thief, recover the bitcoins, and throw him in jail.”
When your Bitcoins get stolen from self-custody, even the maxis want to call FBI 😂😂😂😂
— Arnav Gupta (@championswimmer) January 2, 2023
What will the FBI do dude?
Code is law, innit? https://t.co/XvbgjuxLaz
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