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- 1 Shakeeb Ahmed, an ex-engineer at Amazon, is accused of hacking a popular cryptocurrency exchange.
- 2 The victim decentralized exchange is operated on Solana Blockchain.
A former senior security engineer at Amazon is accused of hacking a globally popular cryptocurrency exchange in the United States and wiping out more than $9 Million in digital currency.
As per the United States Attorney Office of the Southern District of New York, Ahmed is indicted with wire fraud and money laundering after the attack on the decentralized crypto exchange.
According to the LinkedIn profile of Shakeeb Ahmed, he has worked as a senior security engineer at Amazon. Following the news, Amazon cleared that he is no longer an employee of the company.
The victim decentralized exchange is operated on Solana Blockchain. The exchange’s name is not yet revealed, data shows that the hacking event occurred in the second quarter of 2022.
People aware of the incident state that Ahmed allegedly breached the smart contract and inserted fake pricing data to fraudulently cause that smart contract to generate approximately $9 Million worth of inflated fees that he did not legitimately earn, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a statement.
Damian Williams, a US attorney, criticized Ahmed and mentioned that he used his expertise to hack and wipe out Millions of dollars from the exchange and cheat the users of the exchange as the amount stolen might be life savings of some users.
Besides hacking and stealing funds, he is accused of converting his stolen funds into traditional and digital currencies by following complicated procedures on blockchain to mislead the investigation authorities.
Ahmed spent Millions of dollars erasing stolen cryptocurrency ownership and source. He is charged with over four allegations, each carrying 20 years of prison.
Infamous Crypto Scams of 2022
Earlier on June 25, 2022, the unethical actor got control of the multi-signature wallet utilized in deploying Harmony’s bridge highlighted Polygon’s chief information security officer.
The cryptocurrency industry has witnessed several hacks and attacks since its existence. And an instance with Harmony on Thursday, when the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain lost $100 Million to theft on its Ethereum-linked bridge, is a recent example of that.
On August 2, Nomad Bridge said that it was aware of the ongoing exploit. Following the news, more than $190 Million in protocol cryptocurrency were wiped out.
For the uninitiated, the Nomad bridge is a token bridge for cross-chain transfers among Ethereum, Avalanche, Moonbeam, and Milkomeda.
This exploit was unique because the transactions were executed directly and not ‘proved.’ Samczun further explained that processing a message without first proving it is not ideal. On digging further, Samczsun found a fatal flaw in the ‘Replica’ smart contract that was initialized during a routine Nomad upgrade.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions stated by the author, or any people named in this article, are for informational ideas only and do not establish financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading crypto assets comes with a risk of financial loss.
Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast, with a major in macroeconomics and minor in business statistics. She believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks, and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning. She frequently researches, and posts content on the top altcoins, their theoretical working principles and technical price predictions.
