"22-Year-Old Canadian Hacker Allegedly Steals $65M in Crypto from DeFi Platforms"

A 22-year-old Canadian hacker, Andean Medjedovic, has been accused of stealing $65 million in cryptocurrency from two decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, KyberSwap and Indexed Finance. Medjedovic, a mathematics graduate from the University of Waterloo, faces charges of wire fraud, computer hacking, attempted extortion, and money laundering.

According to the indictment, Medjedovic exploited security vulnerabilities in the smart contracts of both platforms to manipulate prices and drain millions of dollars from liquidity pools. He allegedly stole $48.8 million from KyberSwap in 2023 and $16.5 million from Indexed Finance in 2021. Medjedovic meticulously planned the attacks, maintaining a directory of files with labels like "KYBER_KILL" and "template_exploit," and even calculated the optimal time for the attack to coincide with when Americans and Europeans would likely be asleep.

After the attack, Medjedovic attempted to extort KyberSwap developers, investors, and DAO members by demanding control of the protocol in exchange for returning 50% of the stolen funds. He also laundered the stolen cryptocurrency through mixers and blockchain bridges, shuffling the funds across multiple networks to obscure their origin. Medjedovic opened accounts at crypto exchanges using fake identities to liquidate his holdings without raising red flags.

Medjedovic remains at large, and law enforcement agencies continue to pursue him. If convicted, he faces significant penalties, including up to 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud, attempted extortion, and money laundering, as well as 10 years for unauthorized damage to a protected computer.

In response to the hack, KyberSwap announced a treasury program to compensate users affected by the incident. The grant has been fully distributed to 1,371 recipients.