Home
News
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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while pursuing his post-graduation major in blockchain development. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing, along with coding. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing skills, and a reliable craft at explaining the concepts such as blockchain programming, languages and token minting. He also frequently shares technical details and performance indicators of ICOs and IDOs.
