Crypto Market Has Recently Witnessed a Surprising Twist as a Hacker Has Fallen Victim to an Exploit

The hacker responsible for looting $5.4M in Ethereum ($ETH) from the StarkNet-based decentralized money-making platform zkLend, has eventually lost funds to a phishing scam.

A recent report by blockchain security platform, PeckShieldAlert, has disclosed that a hacker who stole 2,930 Ether (ETH), valued at $5.4M, from StarkNet-based decentralized money-making platform, zkLend, has lost the funds to a phishing scam.

The crypto security platform made the announcement on Wednesday via its latest post on X, formerly Twitter. According to the post, the hacker was defrauded by a phisher who was in the process of transferring the stolen funds to Tornado Cash.

“The hacker stole 2,930 ETH from zkLend, fell victim to a phishing attack while attempting to launder the funds through Tornado Cash. The phisher has transferred the stolen funds to Tornado Cash,” PeckShieldAlert said.

PeckShieldAlert’s data shows that the hacker was previously credited with defrauding zkLend of 2,930 $ETH coins. However, while trying to mix the stolen crypto via the mixing platform, Tornado Cash, the hacker was hit by a phishing attack.

As a result of this, the hacker lost the funds to another hacker who had set up a phishing website in an attempt to deceive users of the mixing service into believing that they were interacting with Tornado Cash. However, the malicious actor was able to siphon away the funds.

On-chain analytics from Etherscan.io point out that the hacker was using the address 0xD89...0f1F5 to move the stolen funds. However, they interacted with a phishing website and ultimately lost control of those assets. Following that, the hacker posted a message through the Ethereum blockchain to express regret.

In part, the message reads: “I am trying to withdraw my funds from Tornado Cash to another wallet. But I made a mistake and used a phishing website to withdraw my funds. Now another exploiter has defrauded me of all my coins. I am very upset. I am very sorry for the losses of zkLend. Please advise how to recover the funds from the phishing website.”

The post from PeckShieldAlert comes after another crypto intelligence firm, TRM Labs, recently warned that there has been a significant rise in crypto phishing scams throughout 2024.