Pro-Israel Hackers Destroy $80 Million in Iranian Crypto Exchange Attack

In a recent development, a pro-Israel hacker group known as "Gonjeshke Darande," or "Predatory Sparrow," has been linked to an attack on the Iranian crypto exchange Nobitex. The hackers allegedly stole funds and transferred them to addresses referred to as "trash talk addresses," which contain public keys with variations of the phrase "F*ckIRGCterrorists," a derogatory term targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This action appears to be a response to the escalating tensions between Israel and Iran.

The on-chain data analysis firm elliptic reported that the attack does not seem to be motivated by financial gain. The hackers used "brute force" methods to generate the addresses, which involved extensive computational power to produce key pairs containing specific long text strings. This suggests that the hackers likely do not have control over the private keys for these addresses, making the funds unrecoverable. The act of transferring the stolen funds to these addresses, which are essentially black holes, appears to be a political statement aimed at Nobitex.

SlowMist founder Cosine corroborated this information, confirming that the stolen cryptocurrencies, valued at over $80 million, were transferred to addresses that are very likely to be black holes. This action effectively destroys the funds, making them unrecoverable. The political nature of this hack is evident, as the hackers' primary goal seems to be sending a message rather than profiting from the stolen funds.